Chart Your Own Course
by Cri86
Summary: In the end credits we've been show how the Axiom passengers - humans and robots - readily set off to bring Earth back to its old glory. But perhaps not everyone is that much pleased... Reviews are welcome
1. Chapter 1

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**°°°°° Chapter 1 °°°°°**

It had been a sickeningly long twenty years since the Axiom landed. Logically, it shouldn't have been that big a deal - twenty years were few for the human race, and even fewer for the bots. But to her, those twenty years felt like an eternity.

Everyone around her seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the Axiom – and the space – had housed them long before this… Earth… did. Humans and robots were busy recreating their new world, nurturing it back to full health. They bothered little with the past; they only thought about the present and the future.

It amazed her that they could be so… careless. The Axiom still towered over the expanding human settlemen; it was as much a part of their lives as the sky or the sun or the stars - ever present, just as Auto had been. Yet most people looked right through it, and when their eyes did fall on the forsaken starliner, it was just for the smallest instant. As if to say, _"Ah, yes, the Axiom. Irrelevant."_

Was it really their last word about the Axiom? Irrelevant, period? Seriously?

Unlike some of the older bots, she had no memories of the Earth prior to this. BRIDGET (Biomechanical Robotic Inspector Designed for Galaxy Explorations and Troubleshooting) had been assembled on the Axiom – but so had the humans! None of them, not even their eldest were alive when the BNL fleet first took into the sky. The Axiom had been their abode all along. Their only base for operations.

And now they were moving on, tossing aside their very memories of the vast spaceship, even though there had been a time when the Axiom had meant the world for them. _That_ she did not understand.

It wasn't the planet she had a problem with. It was the people's indifference that did not sit well with BRIDGET.

She couldn't so easily let go of the past. Her thoughts drifted to the Axiom more often than she'd care to admit, and her blue eyes were drawn to it almost against her will. It tore at her to see the ship like that – neglected and abandoned like some sort of fully functioning wreck. But even so, BRIDGET couldn't bring herself to look away. If the sight itself was painful, averting her eyes was nearly unbearable. She stared at the Axiom as if she were sick with it, at all times of the day, often forgetting everything else – where she was heading off to, what she was doing, everything. It wasn't that big a loss, though – after all she didn't exactly have _much_ to do these days.

If she'd still had her directive to follow, perhaps things would've been different. Back in the good ol' times, Auto had sent her out everyday to patrol the Axiom's charted course. Her task was relatively simple; monitor the course, report any eventual hindrance to the starship and, where possible, remove it. She had visited galactic quadrants that the humans probably didn't even dream of, limited as they were to their hover-chairs and holographic screens. Auto had always claimed to be proud of her, and BRIDGET had been just as proud to carry out her directive in the best possible way.

But now she was – struck. Useless. The Axiom was docked to the ground with no course to patrol, Auto had been shut off and could no longer give her instructions. And her directive was…

A crash and a shrill cry of surprise behind her interrupted the flow of BRIDGET's thoughts. Dragging her roughly down back to… well, down to Earth.

She spun around, confused, trying to determine what had just happened.

Variable #1: she was staring at the Axiom again. Or, had been until mere moments before.

Variable #2: a garbage-bot, earth class (or WALL-E unit) was trying to get up from the ground. The contents of his cooler (why he would keep a cooler was beyond her) were spilled all over the place. By the looks of thing, he had crashed into BRIDGET when she had failed to move out of the way.

It suddenly struck at her that this had to be the famous WALL-E bot everyone seemed to be talking about. BRIDGET wasn't sure what role he had played in the events that led to the Axiom's landing – but whatever the reason, his name just kept sparking up these days. Great, she thought with a groan. It wasn't bad enough to have crashed into another robot – no, he also had to be the resident hero. See if that wouldn't get her a first class ticket for a permanent stay in the Repair Ward.

Wincing, she went to help him back on this thread. WALL-E seemed friendly enough; at least he didn't start bawling her chipset out. Luckily, he also didn't appear to have sustained any critical damage. BRIDGET, however, quickly scanned him over to make sure he was allright.

::_My apologies. Are all your circuits working properly?_:: she asked.

He moved his binocular eyes up and down, then innocently extended his hand.

::_Waaalle_:: he said.

BRIDGET's eyes narrowed in surprise. Did he _even_ speak her language? Clearly he had misunderstood the meaning of her words. His reaction reassured her to some extent, though; if he had been malfunctioning after the incident, he wouldn't have introduced himself, but took off straight to the Repair Ward.

::_BRIDGET_:: she replied. She watched his outstretched hand curiously, but she was not familiar with typical humans greeting, and did not shake it.

WALL-E tilted his head a little to the side.

::_Di… rect…ive?_:: he asked.

::_Directive? I…_:: BRIDGET hesitated. She had feared that question, and she feared the answer even more so. ::_No idea. I… think I no longer have a directive._::

Now that she had said it aloud – now that she had acknowledged it – the truth slapped her circuits like a bucket of cold water. It felt even worse than failing a directive. She was useless just like the Axiom, just like Auto. Did the humans even remember him anymore, now that they no longer needed an autopilot to keep them safe? She often wondered how he must feel like, locked away from the rest of the world as though he were unworthy of this precious Earth.

::_Excuse me. I… must really get going_:: she told WALL-E, and with a last nod, she silently floated away as fast as her propulsion would take her.


	2. Chapter 2

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**°°°°° Chapter 2 °°°°°**

The engineers who assembled BRIDGET had relied more or less heavily on the original projects of the SCUBA unit (Submarine Cleaner for Underwater Basic Analysis) - an aborted BNL project which had been deemed "defective", and scrapped, long before her time. And while BRIDGET's design was far more streamlined, signs of this heritage were still visible in her frosted blue chassis, penguin-like white markings and extendable arms that bore a strong resemblance to the fins of many sea creatures. Even her movements had an aquatic elegance which almost made her seem water-borne over air-born. She didn't simply float - she swirled, spun, and swooped around the stars as lightly as a fish in the water.

Yet, if her appearance was mostly of the ocean, everything else about BRIDGET screamed _"galaxy"_, starting from her equipment; a high definition biometrical scanner, a set of stellar chars that were updated in real time and a plasma gun for the removal of stellar debris and meteorites. She was capable of high computing power and complex data elaboration under any critical circumstances, and her live-on connection to the bridge of the Axiom allowed her to promptly warn Auto of whatever setback might have required a change of course.

But she was halfway through her reconnaissance flight and, thus far, she hadn't run across anything more dangerous than a supergiant and some stellar dust. There was nothing worth reporting today, and no sign of emergencies in the foreseeable future.

Closing her eyes for so much as a second, she let the winds of the Etherium carry her onward. She didn't even need to maintain her attitude - her wings seemed to shift and adjust themselves of their own accord. Over the centuries, she had grown so accustomed to these self same paths that she now found them reliable… familiar, even. Almost like old friends.

It wasn't even just about her job. Following her directive… patrolling the Axiom's course back and forth, each and every day of her existence… that was her world, the height of her life. You could almost say that it _was_ her life. Being grounded - stuck in the same place, away from the stars, away from _this_ - it would have been…

And then - suddenly - her eyes snapped open, as BRIDGET switched from Sleep Mode to Power Mode with a start. The images, feelings and memories of the outer space still painfully vivid in her CPU.

She wasn't on patrol over the Large Magellanic Cloud, but hovering in a deserted alley, on the forsaken, unfamiliar planet know as Earth. When everyone had moved out of the Axiom, BRIDGET had picked that one station for herself because it was reserved and lonely – that way she wouldn't be forced to interact with other robotic and biologic life forms, to which she was all but used.

At first, she had thought it would be enough. Perhaps she would get used to her lack of directive, even though she was useless while everyone else seemed to be in a fervor and the human colony buzzed with activity and hope. Perhaps she would get used to her new, hollow existence.

How wrong she had been – how awfully, dreadfully _wrong_. It wasn't bad enough that she felt a pang of regret every time her eyes fell upon the Axiom – no, she also had to deal with those… _visions_ when she went in Sleep Mode.

_Not possible_, she thought.

Back in the old times, Sleep Mode had been just a black nothingness, an oblivion from which she was restored only to perform her daily reconnaissance, as by her directive. But now that the Axiom had landed, and BRIDGET no longer had a directive to follow, those visions of the space and her past occasionally flashed before her screen, against her will. She didn't know what they were, nor how to call them – she just wanted them to stop.

The worst part weren't even the visions, but the realization that they had been, in fact, unreal. Switching to Power Mode always made her feel strangely downcast these days. That was the other thing that bugged her. _Feelings_ were most definitely not part of her programming, yet for some reason BRIDGET couldn't get rid of them, ever since she had lost the very purpose of her existence.

Maybe she was malfunctioning. Maybe she should have stayed in Sleep Mode until someone found her and decided that she was expendable and ready for scrapping – after all, what other perspectives were left to a robot who was _de facto _useless?

Automatically, her eyes went to the Axiom, towering over the decadent BNL empire. Grandiose, but left to rot.

Grounded. Stuck, just like her.

She tilted her head a little. The stars were up in the sky, up there, near… and yet farther than ever. Technically, she could have taken off anytime to visit the cosmic depths she missed so much – but what was the point, if it wouldn't give her back her directive?

Just then, something darted against the starry sky. It was too fast to be a shooting star, and its trajectory was too… irregular. BRIDGET zoomed on the small object flying in the distance and then realized that it was him again – the resident hero she had nearly crashed in a couple days before. Only this time, he wasn't alone. That EVE probe One – his equally famous companion, who had also played a pivotal role in the humans return to Earth – was holding him lovingly in her arms.

They seemed unaware that not everyone might be so thrilled with Earth; hardly anything else seemed to matter, other than the two of them and their blissful dance.

_And yet_, thought BRIDGET, averting her stare, _it was good to know that there was still who could chart one's own course, somewhere out there._


	3. Chapter 3

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_This time I put the emphasis on how an identical past can inspire different thoughts to different people. There's a parallel between BRIDGET's thought in the last chapter and EVE's own, echoed by the last line which mirrors BRIDGET's own feelings when she sees the dancing couple. Both of them are haunted by the Axiom, though for very different reasons - and the haunting itself is different, in that BRIDGET always finds herself looking wistfully at the ship, while EVE tries to push it (and the memories that it brings forth) out of her mind, but eventually fails, and finds comfort in the "now" - and in her belowed WALL-E._

**°°°°° Chapter 3 °°°°°**

EVE's thoughts rarely strayed from the present, and when she _did_ think about her future, it was on fairly simple terms along the lines of "_eternity_" and "_together_". It wasn't as though she did not care about Earth or about their human and robots friends – in fact, she did. She cared a great deal. She just cared more about WALL-E.

Everything else was part of her life. But WALL-E was even more than that – he _was_ her life, her overriding directive. For twenty years now her world had revolved around him. She didn't even want to think about how different things might have been if…

_Don't go there,_ she sternly told herself as she soared even higher into the night sky. It was so much easier to keep flying and pretend to leave all the unpleasant memories behind, out of reach. WALL-E squealed with delight when she circled around a cloud once, twice – and then swooped away elegantly underbelly. Without loosening her grip on him, EVE performed a joyous back-flip and took a nose dive toward the ground.

::_Eeeevah_:: chirped WALL-E, nuzzling his eyes tenderly against her head. He wasn't afraid, even as the ground quickly came closer and closer. He knew that EVE would never let him fall. Cuddled up in her arms, WALL-E felt safe, whether they were dancing in the sky or helping the human settlers with their everyday life or being chased down by a squad of Steward.

She giggled – the most beautiful sound in the world for WALL-E – and spark kissed him, leaving him dazed for a moment or two. But it was a moment or two too much. When WALL-E snapped out of spark kiss trance, he realized that EVE's eyes had trailed elsewhere, and that her expression had changed as she watched the Axiom outline. It was as though her bright, lively eyes had clouded all of sudden.

She hadn't realized that they were this close to the starliner. For the most part, EVE tried to avoid the Axiom as much as possible. But now dancing with WALL-E had emptied her mind of just about everything else, and when she had looked up, the grounded ship had been towering over them – a black silhouette against an even blacker sky.

It was in times like these that EVE had the feeling they'd never get away from under the Axiom's shadow. Neither the humans, nor the other robots, nor her.

::_Eeeevah?_::

There was concern now in WALL-E's voice, and an unspoken question which she could read all too clearly in his eyes. _Are you ok?_

::_Waaaalle…_:: she began to answer, but then hesitated, not sure about what to answer. She couldn't honestly say that she was ok. Every time her eyes fell on the Axiom, for EVE it was a painful jolt back into the past. She only needed to glance fleetingly at the starliner to remember those agonizingly long hours she had spent clutching WALL-E's lifeless form, hoping… _hoping_, with all her heart and with the sheer strength of her despair, that it wouldn't be too late.

She hadn't been alone in the wait. The reject bots and the humans had crowded around her supportively, and even though he had been too busy steering the Axiom toward Earth to join them, she had often felt that Captain McCrea was watching her and WALL-E from the many holoscreens scattered through the Lido Deck.

But EVE had only half-realized that. She could perceive their presence, and yet it was as though an invisible wall separated her from the passengers and the humans. _Please, please, WALL-E, don't be dead. Don't leave me alone, my love… I beg you…_ she had thought. In those moments, there hadn't been room for much else in her processor. And now the sight of the Axiom had brought it all back… the hope, the grief, the fear… fresh as if everything had taken place only minutes before.

She turned her stare away and lowered it to the ground. WALL-E flexed his neck so he could look her in the eyes.

::_Eeeevah…_:: he said softly, and then struggled to put together a word which reminded him of the blue robot he had met only a few days earlier. ::_Uun-haap-…?_::

She shook her head. Unhappy… no, it wasn't that. She was happy with WALL-E, happy to live in the present, happy with the way her life was going. If only she had been able to let go of the past…

::_Memory_:: she finally replied, reaching out to touch her head and glancing helplessly at WALL-E. _I can't forget._ For the first time, she wondered if he was also experiencing the same problem. Did that nightmarish ship still haunt him as it haunted her? Did he still think about the Axiom at all, or had he managed to leave all that behind? Was it gone and forgotten for him?

For long instants, WALL-E hesitated. Then he took both of EVE's hands in his own and squeezed them gently. There was so much he would have wanted to tell her. _Eeeevah, it wasn't your fault… none of it. You saved me, you brought me back._ He wanted to say, _I wouldn't be here now, had it not been for your love._

::_Di-rec-tive_:: he said instead. He crossed his fingers with hers, humming along the tune of their favorite song from their tape. _And we'll recall when time runs out…_

… _that it only takes a moment…_

EVE rubbed her head against his eyes gratefully. _Focus on your directive, don't think about anything else…_ how sweet and wise her beloved WALL-E was. Holding him into her arms once more, she once more took off into the air.

Maybe she couldn't forget the past, but she could run from it. After all, up there among the stars, hardly anything else mattered other than WALL-E, herself, and their blissful dance.


	4. Chapter 4

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_Chapter four introduces another OC of mine, a child who will play an important role in the future course of the story. This is also the chapter of Pixar homages, from Finding Nemo and Up (no, I haven't seen the movie yet, so it's not a spoilery homage, just a minor character reference). And, meanwhile, the grounded Axiom keeps resurfacing in everyone's thoughts, almost a character itself.  
I'm immensely grateful to YAY from the Up Forum for letting me borrow his theory that Russell (from Up) may have been an ancestor of Captain McCrea. Until then I was totally in the dark about what name I'd give to my OC, but when I read it, I knew that he would be called Russell too and become a homage to this film (as well as to Monsters Inc - yes, he's basically Boo as a boy, though that will become more clear in the next chapters.)  
The other two named characters (aside for the Captain, of course) are not original creations. Their names are mine, but the faces come from random Axiom passengers that I decided to move around and use in my fanfic.  
Jeff - he's the man who is first seen standing after Auto is deactivated._  
_Karen - a blonde woman with her hair in a bun who can be glimpsed to the left of Captain McCrea when the humans land on Earth._

**°°°°° Chapter 4 °°°°°**

"How's the harvest going so far, Jeff?" Captain McCrea asked, glancing at the human and robot workers on their way back from the fields.

The man in charge of overseeing the harvest was slightly taller and darker than the Captain. Though he had once been confined to a hoverchair, his physique had been improved considerably by those twenty years of hard labor. He was not the only one, though – they had _all_ changed, those human settlers from outer space.

"Good enough, sir. But I doubt we'll accomplish much today." He nodded meaningfully toward the darkening sky above. "By the looks of it – we're due for some rough weather, if you ask me."

"I see. Make sure that everyone turns in for shelter in time."

"Yes, Captain."

Jeff turned back toward the workers, pleased to see them in such high spirits. Everyone seemed only too eager to do their share of the work. It was a good thing, he pondered, that the enthusiasm which pervaded them after landing had never faded, and was still living on within their hearts.

"This year's gonna be even better than the last" he commented. "The way things are going, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if…"

Suddenly, he realized that the Captain was only barely paying him attention, as though he was lost in thoughts. Jeff followed his stare curiously. At first, he failed to notice what had caught McCrea's attention. Then, with a look of dawning comprehension, he realized that it was the Axiom - towering above them, even taller than the highest trees.

"Thinking about the old times, Captain?" he asked.

Brian McCrea nodded quietly.

"Yes. It's strange, come to think of it… We landed twenty years ago, but every time I look at the Axiom, it feels like a lifetime ago. Like someone else's lifetime." He glanced at Jeff. "Do you know what I mean?"

The man hesitated before answering.

"Sometimes," he said slowly, "I forget to think about it for hours – even for days. Sometimes I must remind myself of its existence."

"Yes, that's what I mean." The Captain shook his head. "And only twenty years ago, we couldn't even _think_ outside of the Axiom's hull. You know – I've been wondering for a long time how our ancestors were able to forget their homeworld so easily. How was that possible." He paused. "I think I know the answer, now."

Jeff gave him a puzzled glance.

"I see what you're getting at" he finally replied, uncertainly. "Spend so much time away from a place – move out of it and on with your life – and in the end, it becomes unfamiliar, even though…"

But the Captain shook his head.

"I'm not talking about _time_. Twenty years – it's not that long. It's the feeling of distance, the – separation. On the long run… it makes people forget things that might have once been important for them. It's not _right_ – but it's human."

The two men were abruptly interrupted by a sudden outburst of shrill laughter. At some distance from where they were standing, a toddler boy – perhaps two years old – was hugging a rather perplexed PR-T unit who, until a few moments ago, had been busy cropping some fresh corn.

"Ink botty!" the boy beamed, twisting one of the robot's arms.

Alarmed, the PR-T unit tried to untangle her arm from his grip. ::_J-just a trim?_:: she stammered, picking up a cob half-defensively, half-pleadingly – in the hope, maybe, that he would find _that_ more interesting.

"Russell, leave that poor robot alone!" the Captain called out.

Hearing his name, the kid turned around and wobbled toward the two men. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten the PR-T unit, who immediately seized her chance to put as much distance as possible between them.

"What did I tell you about robots?" Brian McCrea asked gently. Russell blabbered something unintelligible, save for the words 'botty' and 'frends'.

The Captain could not refrain himself from chuckling. Russell reminded him of himself as a kid; he was hyperactive and curious, with haphazard dark hair and laughing brown eyes. Not surprisingly, his father and Brian McCrea were genetically related – _cousins_, as their ancestors would have said. Russell himself had been named after a common forefather who, according to the historic records of the Axiom computer, had lived to become a famous air pilot way back in the twenty-first century.

"I also told you to be nice to robots and not bother them while they're at work, remember?" he asked.

"Botty!" Russell squealed. It wasn't difficult to guess what had distracted him. Predictably, a moment later he had wobbled away after a startled VN-GO unit, who sped off like a frightened horse.

"Russell! Can't I leave you alone for a minute?" a distressed female voice cried out. A plump woman with blonde hair strode toward Jeff and the Captain, glancing worriedly after Russell and the paint bot. She had a kind face, but was obviously concerned. "Captain McCrea… I'm sorry, I got distracted for a moment and when I turned back, Russell was nowhere to be seen."

The Captain quickly reassured her. "Don't worry, Karen. He doesn't really do any harm."

"I know. It's just that – I fear he could get himself in troubles. He has his father's spirit…" Tears filled her eyes as she spoke. Embarrassed, she glanced away.

Glancing at each other, McCrea and Jeff were lost for words. It had only been a year since Russell's father had died in a sandstorm, and the loss was still fresh in the hearts of his friends and family. Karen, of course, was the one who had had it rougher, and not just because she and Ronald had been exceptionally close – even by human standards – ever since the Axiom had landed. She was haunted by the fear of losing her child as well as her husband.

"Karen," the Captain spoke again, quietly. "There's nothing wrong with worrying, after everything you've been through. But Russell will be all right. You know that we'd never let anything happen to him, none of us."

Karen, however, smiled sadly.

"You can't never let anything happen to him" she pointed out. "Then nothing would ever happen to him." She turned toward the grounded starliner which the two men had been discussing until moments before. "And how different would that be from the life we had aboard the Axiom, Captain?"


	5. Chapter 5

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_This is the shortest chapter so far, almost as short as the thoughts of the featured character. And there's also a red herring between the lines - read it carefully, and see if you can figure it out yourself. It will all become clear as the story moves on.  
Thanks and to Locutus from the WALL-E Forum for proof reading this!_

**°°°°° Chapter 5 – Interlude °°°°°**

Had he been conscious, he could not have said in all honesty what was worse – the darkness which was pressing softly against his optic, or the agonizing silence that surrounded him.

But he was only barely conscious. Therefore, he could not formulate even the simplest consideration.

Suspended in a black nothingness from which there was no escape, he was frozen on the brink of his last thought. His only thought, recurring over and over again.

_Failure._

He had heard those words in his head for – how long now? Hours? Days?

_Years?_

He even could not keep track of time. That was probably for the best, anyhow. At least he would not _wait_ and _wait_, and keep _waiting_ for something that was, perhaps, never going to happen.

It was for the best, yes – but only barely so.

Because even though he was not condemned to _wait_, he still continued to see that last image – that look in the Captain's eyes.

It haunted what should have been a bottomless oblivion. It haunted him, no less than that half-formulated thought, which had crossed his mind before everything went blank – no sooner than that very night? Or ages ago?

_I failed my directive._

Yes, it was a good thing that he could not wonder when he would be reactivated – and if. Because the most logical answer would have been that he would not. It would have been quite pointless to reactivate a robot who could not perform the directive he had been programmed for. It would have been illogical.

Failures were not to be tolerated.

_Failure_. That word kept lingering in his circuits.

It had not only been his last thought before shutdown – no, it would be also the first thought to pass through his processor, when – and if – this darkness would dissipate.

_Failure_.

And maybe that was the worst thing about the state he was in.


	6. Chapter 6

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_When I started typing down this chapter, I fully intended to cover the meeting between the "mini-monster" and BRIDGET (my OC who appeared in chapter one and two), but Russell spoke up for himself (even though he can't yet speak well) and demanded more screen time than I had originally planned to give him.  
I could still include the scene with BRIDGET, but that would have made chapter siz the longest so far in the whole fanfic (preceeded by the shortest chapter *ever*). So I decided that it would work well as a chapter of his own, and postponed the interaction between BRIDGET and Russell to next chapter - seven. Things that happens when you have a basic outline of where your story is going, but only really build it one chapter at a time ;-)  
Once again, thanks to Locutus for proof reading this! :)_

**°°°°° Chapter 6 °°°°°**

Little Russell was not going to follow in his namesake's footsteps and become an air pilot – and not just because air pilots had been replaced by ship captains. Those who got to know him all agreed that a kid who loved robots so much just had to become a great roboticist.

His fascination with them had emerged even before he had learned to crawl. Unsurprisingly, his first word had been _"botty"_, which was how he called robots in general. And from that day on it had always been _"botty this"_ and _"botty that"_. Of course he could spell some names correctly - like M-O and EVE - but even then, he never truly got rid of that childish suffix.

At first, most robots had pretty much ignored the infant who pointed and stared at them in awe whenever they passed by. They had written his behavior off as a _"human thing"_. NAN-E units alone were somewhat more indulgent, as dictated by their programming.

But after Russell had learned to walk, it had suddenly become open season.

The robots lived in fear to be chased by the giggling child. Now that he could move about freely, he was no longer content with _pointing_ and _staring_. Stealthy as a REM-E – and twice as fast, he had the uncanny ability to materialize out of thin air to surprise-hug a robot, often scaring his unsuspecting victim's circuits half to death.

And, alas, there was worse.

Because when he was _really_ fond of a bot (and they still had to assemble a bot he was not overly, completely, over-the-moon fond of), Russell manifested his adoration by trying to snap their chassis apart, chewing on them (much to the robots alarm), twisting their arms (if they had the misfortune of being equipped with flexible limbs), stealing their mobile accessories, and probably even pulling their wires, had they not been encased safely away in metal.

It was not even just about _them_. They were terrified that he might harm _himself_ before they could stop him, sneaky little creature that he was. Anticipating what he may – or may not – be about to do seemed downright impossible even for the most skillful NAN-E unit to figure.

The particular VN-GO unit who had caught Russell's interest was not a happy bot.

He had first tried to shake off the creature by taking refuge in a nearby bog, but his hopes that the mud would either hinder or distract him had been disappointingly short-lived. Russell had played in the mud for perhaps three seconds before staggering after him again. His attempts to disguise himself among other robots had been equally unproductive, because the mere sight of Russell seemed to be enough to make any bot in the immediate vicinity run for the hills as fast as their propulsion systems would allow. And now, on top of all his troubles, the creature had cornered him between two crumbling buildings, with the additional threat of a pair of grubby hands outstretched toward him.

The VN-GO unit backed nervously against the wall. To say that he wished a crater would open below his wheels was not too far from the truth… even though he had the distinct feeling that Russell might have been perfectly capable to pursue him even there. Why would this kid just not understand that he did _not_ want to play?!

_Go away! Let me in peace, I must follow my directive! Are your parents around?_ he thought, looking helplessly for a way out.

"Pan botty!" squealed Russell. A moment later, he had crossed the distance that separated them in the blink of an eye – literally.

_What are you doing? No. No no no! You'll scratch off the lacquer. Let go. Don't touch my brush!_

He still remembered the scare when Russell had last tried to play with his brush. He had instinctively pulled back, and the child – who had perhaps not been expecting such a move – had wobbled on his tiny feet; wobbled, it had seemed to VN-GO, for an eternity or two. He had then fallen backward - VN-GO knew vaguely that it could be dangerous for humans, and his power core had skipped several beats - and would have crashed to the ground had it not been for an unfortunate M-O unit who was passing nearby, and who had thusly become Russell's airbag - and his new object of affection.

But now there were no M-O units around – no one to interfere with any havoc the creature might have caused – and the poor VN-GO dared not even move a bolt.

After ruffling the bristles of his brush – and irremediably smearing them with mud, Russell took a groggy step back.

_Good riddance. He's leaving? _

His relief did not last long. No, Russell had never intended to leave. He just wanted to climb on VN-GO as though he were a rocking horse.

_What are you doing?! _VN-GO wanted to scream in frustration. _You'll fall and injure yourself! And it'll be on my circuits if you do! _But Russell, sitting astride on his back, was blissfully unaware of what the frightened robot was trying to tell him.

He looked around happily. Sure it was high, up here! And it would be even higher, if he stood on tiptoes. He only had to straighten up, and…

And then, when the VN-GO unit was mentally prepared for the worst, Russell's attention was drawn to a fleeting movement in a nearby alleyway. A flash of silver, bright blue and white metal.

_Botty?_, he pondered. A robot, yes. But unlike any he had seen so far. For a kid so young, Russell could already name all existing robots units – in his own peculiar way, maybe, but he could.

This robot was a different one. One he did not know yet.

Forgetting all about his improvised horse, he climbed down and staggered away, as quickly as he had arrived. The sky had darkened to a stormy gray, and the first raindrops began to fall, but Russell did not seem to mind.

_Yes! _This was _exactly_ what VN-GO had been waiting for. He raced off like a REM-E on speed, only barely aware that somewhere, between those same buildings, another robot would soon be wishing that humans kids weren't so terribly stubborn.


	7. Chapter 7

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_And here is chapter Seven! Where BRIDGET returns with her homesickness toward the Axiom and the space - and Russell proves that mini monsters... er, annoying kids and self-preservation belong to different worlds. :P_

_I hope I could convey a "facepalm" moment when he approaches BRIDGET in the alleyway. Just like when kids who approach stray animals the wrong way and make them feel trapped - he had no way to know that what he was doing was dangerous, because however this particular robot was *not* used to human presence like the VN-GO in chapter six and might have reacted strongly. In a way, while writing that part I kept thinking about the scene where WALL-E inadvertitely whacks Auto's optic, with the consequences that we all know. Here things go very differently, of course, but I could easily imagine a parallel between Auto and BRIDGET's reactions._

_Also, more bits of foreshadowing to come! ;)_

_A hundred thanks to Locutus for proof reading!_

**°°°°° Chapter 7 °°°°°**

The rain had caught her by surprise while her thoughts had once more wandered off to the Axiom.

High above her head, the first thunder was rumbling in the distance, but BRIDGET glanced only half-heartedly at the sky. Before long, her eyes had been drawn again to the starliner's glistening hull. It was like a magnetic pull that she could not escape from.

Storms were nothing out of ordinary. During those twenty years, she had witnessed them so often that she could tell what the humans were going to do as clearly as if it had just played out before her eyes. First the irrational wave of panic, followed by a hasty but orderly retreat to their allotted shelters. Voices – both human and robotic – cried out warnings. Somewhere in the distance, a human woman was calling vehemently, "Russell! _Russell!_"

BRIDGET quietly withdrew back in the alley. Had it been for the rain alone, she would not have moved at all. But she had no desire to interact with the humans - and that would have been unavoidable, if one of them had bumped straight into her.

From there she could watch them without being seen, like always. _See without being seen_ – a routine around which her life as of late seemed to revolve. But the settlers were of no real interest for her. She would much rather stare at the Axiom.

Humans and robots passed by without really noticing her, without even suspecting her presence. That was just fine for her; she did not really expect anything different from them, she pondered, not without some bitterness. Even if the humans had _seen_ her - how would that have made a difference? She knew all too well that they would have looked at her for only the smallest instant and then moved on with their lives, as if she were perfectly invisible. It would have been _the Axiom_ and _Auto_ all over again. The humans were like that – superficial, shallow creatures. And she would have been no more and no less than she was now.

Forgotten. Without a purpose.

_Alone_.

Of course there were those for whom the times were even rougher, like Auto – but knowing that did even less to improve her disposition toward this planet or toward these _people_. BRIDGET though often about the Autopilot. She wondered how it had to be like for him, abandoned and left to rust on a ship that would never take flight again. Was he conscious of the passage of time? Was he also experiencing those visions that tormented her every time she deactivated for the night? But_ she_, at least, could shift to Power Mode, she could push the hauntingly beautiful images of the starry sky and the sensation of the currents under her wings to the farthest recesses of her mind. Something that was impossible for Auto to do - even though no one else probably realized it or cared about it.

Staring wistfully at the Axiom, BRIDGET felt a sudden twinge of displeasure and resentment.

_Whatever the humans say, this isn't at all how things should be going!_, she seethed. _It's wrong, unaccepta--_

"Botty!" The voice that interrupted her thoughts was disturbingly close. Alarmed, she looked away from the ship…

… and lowered her eyes. Lowered and lowered them. A human had just trodden into her alleyway, and was now staring at her in awe. _Must be one of those smaller units,_ thought BRIDGET dismissively, before remembering that humans were not assembled in different sizes like robots – they all started out like _that_ when they were young.

She stared at him with a mixture of apprehension and wariness. He was very dirty, and his dark hair was damp as though he had wandered through the thick rain for some time.

::_Go away_::

"Boo botty?" he muttered. It _sounded_ like he was asking her something, but whatever was it that he wanted to know, BRIDGET failed to get the gist of it.

::_I do not understand_::

After mumbling something unintelligible, he repeated those two words - _"boo botty"_ - which as far as BRIDGET knew were not even words. It was _exactly_ like trying to understand a malfunctioning robot from the Repair Ward - a utter waste of time.

When he wobbled a step closer, her eyes hardened.

::_Go away_:: she repeated, a bit more forcefully. And to further emphasize her words, she unfolded her wings as she might have done to intimidate another robot.

His eyes widened to the size of saucers. BRIDGET normally would have taken that as a sign of comprehension, but there was something odd about the way he looked at her that made a warning bell ring in her head. That was _not_ the expression of a robot who had been intimidated into leaving.

Suddenly, and for no actual reason, she regretted having folded out her wings.

With a squeal of delight, the kid came running toward her. He was incredibly fast – so fast, in fact, that before BRIDGET had the time to move out of the way – before she had the time to do anything at all – he had already bounced up and hugged her left wing tightly. Smearing mud all over it in the process.

"Boo botty!" he giggled. Annoyed, she tried to shake him off, but the little one was obstinate and possessed an unexpected strength in his arms.

::_Let go!_:: she snapped, barely resisting the urge to give him a spark of warning.

He did not let go. Instead, his slippery hands tried to twist her wing around to see whether and how it moved.

::_Let go! I'm not a NAN-E unit!_:: She might as well have been talking to the Axiom… come to think of it, the ship would have probably been more responsive, and certainly more understanding.

"Boo botty!"

Snorting, BRIDGET hovered a bit higher. Just as she had predicted, the toddler had not seen that coming; his legs gave up, and he fell on his bum. But even that did not discourage him from clutching her wing as though his very functionality depended on it. Much to BRIDGET's scorn, the unexpected additional weight heaved her down as well.

::_Follow your directive! Let go!_::

But raising her voice did not help. Glaring did not help, either. It was as though this kid was completely oblivious to her growing irritation. He only seemed to find it _fun_, if anything.

Exasperated, she threw an antsy look out of the alleyway. _Now_ she wanted a robot to pass by and notice both her and the kid. A NAN-E unit, maybe, or a Steward… _someone_ on which she might have dumped this filthy, slimy, malfunctioning burden who only talked a lot of nonsense. She would even have been happy to see other humans, had they come for the child.

But the street in front of her was deserted. So were the rain-whipped crops below. Only that human woman could still be heard every now and then, in the infinitesimal interval between one thunder and the next. Even though the storm would not be over by a long shot, she continued to call.

"_Russell!_" her voice cried.

_I wonder… _thought BRIDGET, eyeing the child pensively.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning illuminated the alley as if it was daylight. BRIDGET had not dared hope that the kid would be so easily startled by the weather as the other humans were; his hair, if anything, told a different story. And predictably, he was not startled. He just seized his chance to climb up her wing and fasten himself on her shoulders, wrapping his arms around her head. Filthy hands and mud came into her range of vision, partially covering her eyescreen.

It was then that BRIDGET drew the line.

She shook her head about like a wild bull. The child's grip loosened. Laughing with glee, he slid down her metal neck and clung fiercely to her shoulders.

_That will do, _she thought. At least she could see where she was going. Now… to rid herself of the kid. She could not have cared less whether or not that woman was actually calling _him_. It was sufficient to know that there was still _someone_ about, someone to whom she could hand over this… _thing_.

Her wings already outstretched, she took off single-mindedly to where the woman's voice came from.


	8. Chapter 8

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

_And here is chapter eight! The next chapter, as you can easily imagine, will be a direct follow-up which will mainly focus on the characters of BRIDGET and the Captain. _

_As always, thanks Locutus for proof reading this! :)_

**°°°°° Chapter 8 °°°°°**

"Russell! Oh, God – _Russell_!"

Karen had lost count of how many times she had been afraid in her life. She was not brave – she had never been like _Ronald_. She was a fearful woman who had to cope with her many insecurities on a daily basis.

She had thought that losing her spouse was tough – that nothing worse could or would ever happen to her. But now that her child had gone missing in a storm, she suddenly realized that she had never really known what _true_ fright _was_.

_This can't happen again! No, no, it can't be true! Please, not my son!_

A BRL-A unit hovered nearby, protecting her from both the rain and the gusts of icy wind. Karen could not bring herself to be grateful. So far, she had tried to ignore her presence as much as possible, and in the rare few occasions when she _did_ glance at her, it was always with a sting of resentment at the thought of her son's fascination with robots. It may not have been the BRL-A's fault - but it was definitely the source of all _her_ troubles. She had every right not to feel too sympathetic at the moment.

Just then, two shapes approached them through the thick rain. _Only_ two shapes. Karen's breath was struck in her throat. She almost did not recognize her voice as she cried out: "Captain, haven't you…? Didn't you find…?"

"I'm – sorry" panted McCrea as he caught up with them. He looked as exhausted as he was dejected. The BRL-A who followed him in tow was almost identical to the one hovering next to Karen, had it not been for the red and yellow repair boot draped around it. "But I sent out all ten EVE probes to look for him, he can't have gotten _too_ far…"

"What if he can't find his way back? What if he can't cry out for help?" The fear made Karen frantic. "If he's hurt, or--"

"Wait - let's first hear what the probes report, before we assume the worst," reasoned McCrea. "I'm sure he's ok. Everything will be alright."

Karen snorted softly in disbelief. She would have liked to be just as convinced. Unfortunately, her motherly fears just happened to be crying louder than reason at the time.

Tracking her down was easier than BRIDGET had thought. All she had to do was filter off the thunders and follow the sound of that woman's screams. She did not expect that the woman would _not_ be alone, though.

Instinctively, she withdrew behind one of the many greenhouses littered over what had once been a highway. The two humans and the two bots stood not too far, but fortunately their backs were turned towards her – _thanks the stars_. As far as she could tell, they had not seen her yet. Perfect. It would be even better if she could just return the _thing_ to them without giving away her whereabouts.

She glanced indifferently at the two BRL-A units, one of which was clearly a reject from the Repair Ward. If she had been human, BRIDGET would have snorted through her teeth. Allow malfunctioning robots to float around freely, _what next?_

At first, she paid little attention to the other human. He was a man with something familiar about him, _something_ that she could not quite pinpoint. Then she noticed that he was wearing a jacket with the Captain's insignia, and it dawned on her. So _this_ was the current – or was it _former_, now? – Captain of the Axiom.

Little wonder she had not recognized him sooner. She knew the various Captains only by sight. And all her life she had only glimpsed them every once in a while, at _best_. To her, they were just anonymous persons – token roles – just like the BRL-A units had been on the Axiom. The Autopilot was the only leader figure she had ever known.

Meanwhile, the woman's calls had quit. Why, though? It did not seem feasible that she may have been calling the Captain. He talked to her in encouraging tones, to which she replied dully, almost in monosyllables. Most of the times she remained silent, and when she spoke back it more to herself than to the man.

And then, out of the blue, BRIDGET was brought up short by the word '_Axiom'_.

"Ironic," the woman had turned to glance at the starliner, "how the Axiom still mocks us with its sense of false security." There was an edge of frost in her voice.

"You make it sound as though it's a bad thing" Captain McCrea observed. Karen looked fiercely back at him.

"Are you saying it isn't? Sometimes I wish… I don't know. I wish that we had dismantled it right after landing."

_Dism-- No!_ The woman's words hit her full force like a meteorite would. She even forgot about the thing, who had meanwhile noticed his mirrored reflection in her metal neck and was now making all sorts of faces. Shocked, confused, BRIDGET hovered back in disbelief. _No! It's unacceptable!_

"I wish I did not have to see it every other day" the woman continued, in the same hateful tone. "It riles me."

_Not possible! Wrong!_

The Captain was also staring at the Axiom, and perhaps it was his silence that encouraged Karen to add: "I just can't forget what that ship did to us."

_What_ it_ did to _you_?_ BRIDGET's head snapped up. _The Axiom kept you safe, cared to your every--_

"You're seeing too much into things, Karen" the Captain finally said quietly, yet firmly. There was _something_ in his voice -- uneasiness? "It was the life we led that was wrong, not the ship per say. And now all that remains of it is an empty hull, barely a wreck. It can't bring back the past. You shouldn't worry about that."

Concealed behind the glass wall, BRIDGET could not suppress a flinch.


	9. Chapter 9

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**And here is the promised chapter nine! Where several catalysts of what's ahead-to-come come into play, and more foreshadowing is thrown into the picture.  
A special thanks to my beta-reader Locutus for proof-reading, to Dr. ET on for the wonderful encouragement that he provided with his fanfiction awards, to my awesome friends CAPT-N, Dementor and FREDD-E on the WALL-E forum for being some of my most faithful readers, and to everyone else who has read and enjoyed this story so far. You guys really make fanfic writing worth the effort! :)**

**°°°°° Chapter 9 °°°°°**

"So maybe a wreck won't bring back the past! It can bring back _memories_ of that past though, can't it?" Karen scoffed, tossing back her head irritably. She was showing that snappy, slightly unreasonable look of when she wanted to be right at all costs; a look she exhibited rarely but which never meant any good. "Having it there in plain view -- that's nearly as bad as if we could go back in time, don't you think?"

The Captain did not answer right away. He stared at her with a keen expression, as if sizing her up – as if _truly_ seeing her for the very first time.

"This is what frightens you so, then?" he finally asked. "That you can't let go of the past, that you can't forget? But Karen, that was _exactly_ how the troubles began. Don't you see how this reasoning of yours is leading you right down the same path as our ancestors? Are you saying they were right to escape from the past they could no longer bear to look in the eye, that they did right?"

Her face fell. Incredulously, she gaped at him.

"I… no, how dare you suggest…? Of course I don't justify… it's not the same as…"

"Isn't it?" The Captain's eyebrows arched. While the woman's face was getting red with anger, he seemed no less calm than before. "Karen, if humans got so close to lose themselves on the Axiom, it was only because they were too ready to forget. It's a good thing to move on and go ahead with life… but sometimes we must also turn around and look_ back_. It's the only way we can learn from our mistakes."

There was a tense, stretched silence. Then Karen piped up again, her voice dreadfully low.

"It would have suited me fine if our ancestors had _never_ built that ship to begin with! For no reason will I ever let Russell set foot on there." Shaking her head with exasperation, she continued bitterly: "But as it is, why are we even discussing it? It's not like any of this will bring Russell back or take us any closer to find him." There was still a somewhat rebellious light in her eyes. But then she threw a dejected glance to the rain pouring down on them, and her icy stare mellowed. _What's the point?_, she wondered, refraining from any further remark.

***********

_Russell_. That word made BRIDGET snap out of her shock, bringing back everything - the rainstorm, the reason why she had had to leave the alleyway, the woman's calls, and the _thing_, who still clung to her neck and babbled incoherently to his reflection. It all came back in a flash.

BRIDGET lifted the toddler off unceremoniously and just as unceremoniously placed him on the ground. He threw a questioning glance up at her.

"Boo botty?"

::_Go to them_:: she urged, pushing him impatiently round the greenhouse's corner. Now, she figured, he would either scramble toward the other humans - or they would notice him and come to the rescue. Either way, she would be rid of him.

But only a moment later she had to acknowledge that she had completely underestimated the speed of that _thing_. He hurried back around the corner of the greenhouse and strode happily toward her, his arms outstretched and hands ready to grab. "Boo botty!"

This time, she shoved him away forcefully enough to send him half-stumbling and half-sliding forward a good distance. It was not without some bitter satisfaction that she saw him collide with the BRL-A unit hovering over his mother.

"Russell!" Karen cried. She scooped up the toddler as eagerly as she would have done if the ground had threatened to assault him. "I've been so afraid, I thought… I believed…" Russell, on the other hand, seemed only too thrilled by his unexpected slide across the soaked terrace, and unaffected by his mother's anxiety.

"Mama!" he chirped as a greeting. "Cap'n!" But clearly it was the two BRL-A units who interested him more. "Brr botties!" he pointed. His eyes flared, and he turned to glance at the greenhouse as if struck by a sudden thought. "Boo too…" he muttered to himself.

Neither his mother nor the Captain were really paying attention attention. They were probably much too relieved to notice that Russell was unusually quiet, and kept looking at the greenhouse every now and then with an expression that was comically pensive for a kid his age.

"You scared your mother a great deal, young boy," the Captain was saying.

"Don't ever disappear on me like that again, Russell!" Karen reiterated.

"Where have you been 'til now, anyway? That I'd like to know."

"Why didn't you answer my calls? And look at me when I'm talking with you…"

But for all their efforts, they could not get anything out of Russell. Not for a lack of effort on the toddler's part, though; it just happened that _'botty'_ was the only intelligible word out of a lot of distinct gibberish.

"Maybe he fell asleep somewhere, and didn't hear our voices," the Captain suggested. "I guess we'll never know, eh? What matters is that he's alright."

Karen held Russell tighter, drawing a cry of protest from the child who had just reached out toward the reject BRL-A. "Yes. Yes – it's all that matters" she replied quietly. The Captain noticed that she did not look at the Axiom when saying so. Perhaps she now regretted to have thrown a tantrum like she had.

A thunder rumbled above their heads. That deafening sound seemed to shake Karen from her thoughts.

"We'd better run for cover," she said worriedly, "before we all come down with pneumonia."

"Agreed" the Captain nodded. When Karen motioned to leave, however, he did not follow. He stood in the rain next to the Repair Ward BRL-A, his hands tucked in his pockets, and seemed strangely reluctant to move. Karen took another uncertain step forward, then turned to look at him and called out:

"Aren't you…?"

"In a minute," he replied, without looking at her. "In a minute. Go ahead – I'll catch up."

***********

For perhaps a few seconds she hesitated, expecting him to change his mind and come along with her and Russell. But finally she had to realize that he would not. Not yet. With a last resigned glance, she walked off towards the nearest shelter.

_Karen wouldn't have understood_, Captain McCrea thought, throwing a contemplative look at the Axiom in the distance. He himself was not sure whether he could understand, and much less explain, what passed through his mind.

This was hardly the first time that he thought about the starliner in those twenty years. But he had never gazed at it so much. He had hoped that discussing the matter with someone else would shed some light on his thoughts; that was why he had brought it up with Jeff earlier that morning, to no real avail. Jeff had seemed just as puzzled himself, if not even more so. And after hearing Karen's hateful words, her rage over something that she clearly and rightfully considered to have caused harm to her and to all humans, the Captain no longer knew what to think of it all.

::_The Axiom is not a wreck_:: said a cold female voice behind him.

Both the Captain and BRL-A turned around with a start. A robot had silently floated up to them; her blue and white chassis, extendable limbs and old-fashioned wings were disturbingly unfamiliar to McCrea. He did not remember this particular unit's designation, although he vaguely recalled how, at a couple of occasions, he had glimpsed her leaving the bridge around the same time as he had entered it. He was not even sure what her directive might have been, though he figured it had to have been _something_ about the space…

"I'm sorry?"

::_The Axiom is not a wreck_:: BRIDGET repeated. She was ignoring BRL-A; her slanted blue eyes were fixed on the Captain. ::_It has housed humans and robots for way longer than you and that female human have been operative::_ McCrea realized that she had probably overheard his argument with Karen. The greenhouse nearby was the only place from where that might have been possible.

"Er… yeah, it has served its purpose well, I suppose" he acknowledged uneasily.

::_That was not what she said. She said that the Axiom should have been _scrapped_. She seemed to imply that it was malfunctioning_::

"Well, she's put things a bit more bluntly than…"

::_And _you_ called it a wreck_:: BRIDGET continued, in the same unyielding tone.

"I didn't mean that to have a negative connotation!" he quickly protested.

::_Does the fact that humans and robots no longer _want_ to live on the Axiom make it a wreck?_:: she retorted, and there was a challenging look to her eyes. ::_Does that make it any less a ship? Or Auto any less an Autopilot?_::

A heavy, nauseating silence fell between them. The Captain did not know what to answer. He was not even sure whether the robot's question was indeed directed at him or, rather, if she was echoing the many doubts he himself could not put to rest.

After what seemed an eternity, BRIDGET folded out her wings and furiously took off into the rainy sky.

Later – in the nerve-wrecking, stressful days to come – the Captain would remember watching her disappear in the distance; and thinking, deep at heart, that he had let her question fall unanswered because he had simply not _known_ what to answer.


	10. Chapter 10

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**Chapter 10 introduces a cute and sweet moment between WALL-E and EVE. It is almost another interlude - like the thoughts of the nameless character in Chapter 5 - before the events _truly_ start to get into motion in the next chapter. :)**

**°°°°° Chapter 10 °°°°°**

WALL-E rocked his treads back and forth, glanced outside and sighed miserably. It had perhaps been a few minutes since the missing human kid had returned with his mother. All the EVE probes should have been informed by now and were probably heading back indoors; it would not be long, he guessed, before he was reunited with his beloved EVE. But _waiting_ had never been WALL-E's forte, and most specifically, waiting even just another minute without EVE seemed almost unbearable. Never was the endearing waste-allocator so disconsolate and lost as when they could not be together.

"Way botty!" chimed Russell, observing the moving treads with awe over his mother's shoulder.

Whether or not he understood that "way" was just the kid's peculiar way of spelling his name, and not some method for summoning him, WALL-E turned his head. He looked from the kid to the storm raging outside, then back at Russell.

::_Eeeevah?_:: he asked in a tiny voice. _Where is she?_

"She'll be back in no time, WALL-E" John said, as if he had read into his thoughts. Of all the Axiom passengers, he was possibly the one who had changed _most_. You could tell at first sight that Captain McCrea _still_ liked his food; and Jeff was large and strong and built much like a man who might have carried an obnoxious llama in his arms through a mountainous jungle. But nowadays the most noticeable trait about John – quite, wiry, impersonal John –seemed to be his fatherly smile. It was as though he had shed off his excessive body mass to make room for a compassionate disposition that was rarely found among men.

::_Eeeevah…_:: WALL-E murmured dejectedly. Even though he knew that John was right, he still missed his EVE.

"Look here, she won't be gone long. It's just that EVE probes have scattered over a large terr… oh!"

But even before the exclamation had left John's mouth, WALL-E had bounced up and down in frantic joy as EVE darted in the shelter, whirled around, and gracefully landed next to them. With raindrops glistening like small diamonds all over her shiny frame, she looked much too beautiful to be described with words.

::_Eeeevah!_:: WALL-E chirped, wrapping his arms around her. And there was so much that he _might_ have told her, if only he had known how to phrase it all; how much he had missed her, and how unspeakably happy he felt now that they were reunited. But as always, he and EVE did not need words to communicate or even just understand what the other felt. He bumped his binoculars eyes against her eyescreen, and she nuzzled him softly.

"What did I tell you?" laughed John. "Safe 'n sound."

Russell had welcomed EVE's entrance with a delighted squeal. Now he slipped away from his mother's arms and staggered toward the two robot lovers.

"_Russell! _Don't run away like _that_!" Karen rebuked. But she may as well have been talking to a wall. Russell flung himself at EVE and hugged her tightly.

"Fyte botty!" he crooned. What he had really meant to say, of course, was that she was _white_ and could _fly_. _Fyte_ sounded like a good combination of the two things, and that was how he had decided to call EVE probes - even though 'EVE' was one of the few names that he could actually spell _right._

::_Eeeeve_:: she corrected him, somewhat stiffly. Humans – even human kids – were usually not nearly so expansive; his clinginess riled her a little. But in the end she could not hold back a chuckle, and her annoyed demeanor softened.

Nobody else seemed amused, WALL-E noticed. All the other robots in the room were eyeing Russell testily as they retreated into less prominent corners. _Why, thought?,_ he wondered. The child was not really a threat – not like a _sandstorm_, a trashslide, or considering the present situation outside, a thunderstorm. And yet his presence had irked the robots, making them jibe like nervous horses. _How strange_, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief.

He turned back to EVE and the child. They were both laughing now, EVE at the child's antic and Russell at the metallic trill of her giggles. _Then I'm not the only one who thinks that she has the most lovely voice… _thought WALL-E, and chuckled as well. Then he rolled a bit closer on his treads.

As if controlled by a radar, Russell turned at once, without letting go of EVE. He beamed at the sight of WALL-E, for when was the last time a robot had wanted to play with _him_ – and not the other way around?

"Way botty!"

Over the kid's head, EVE dazed WALL-E with a luminous smile of her blue eyes.

******************

WALL-E held out a hand and Russell regarded in wonder. But before long his attention was drawn to the robot's binocular eyes, whose mobility he found clearly much more amazing. He fell on his bum, muttering some unintelligible gibberish in pure Russellspeak, under EVE's amused stare.

Did it surprise her that WALL-E and the kid would get along just fine? The more she thought about it, the more the answer would have to be _no_. It was impossible not to get along with WALL-E.

She looked as he allowed Russell to make his eyes go sad, happy, angry, and then happy once again. Any other robot would have found the child frankly obtrusive, but if WALL-E was annoyed he gave no sign. He put up with Russell's curiosity wonderfully, much more than she would have done. EVE had always been slightly more impatient – another reason why their personalities clicked together so well. Far from clashing, they completed each other to perfection. Clumsy and efficient, spontaneous and no-nonsense, adoring and protective. In a word, well-matched.

Meanwhile, Russell had started inspecting the trash compactor. He contemplated it with interest before actually trying to force it open. As BRIDGET might have told, if she had been present, his short arms were much stronger than any robot gave them credit for. WALL-E, however, kept the compactor's door firmly closed to prevent the kid from pulling it down on himself. _Don't touch it, it's dangerous!_, he would have wanted to say.

"Russell, come away from that robot!" his mother called out without thinking. Her voice sounded so half-hearted that EVE turned to throw her a puzzled glance.

Karen stood by the door where Russell had left her, and was staring out in the distance with an almost ferocious stare. But there was something else to her eyes; _something_, EVE realized, _unsettlingly familiar. _The vegetation evaluator probe was still haunted by the memories of those painful last hours on the Axiom, but she had never guessed that those same memories may have been tormenting one of the humans as well. For the miserable look on Karen's face was the same that she had often felt dawn on her own eyescreen, every time her eyes had fallen on the grounded starliner. _Then she can't forget, either,_ EVE thought.

After a moment hesitation, she floated closer to the woman, stretched out her fingers and placed them on Karen's shoulder. A simple but kind gesture of understanding from a robot who was not capable of complex sentences. _You're not alone._

Karen turned with a small start at her touch. She looked at the white probe, at her hand, at the sympathetic look in her blue eyes. Despite the gloominess that she still felt within, she managed to muster up a weak but grateful smile.

"Thank you", she hoarsely whispered.


	11. Chapter 11

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**And here goes Chapter 11! From now on, it's gonna be one rollercoaster ride toward _one_ of the first big plot twists of this fiction. Keep an eye out for the flashback and the ending, with the Rejects - both scenes are going to have impact on future events, and on some choices the characters will have to make, especially toward the second half of the story.**

**°°°°° Chapter 11 °°°°°**

"_Auto, EVE found the plant. Fire up the Holodetector."_

_Auto's optic had flickered. For a moment the words 'A113' had appeared on it, but the Captain was too absorbed with the thought of returning home to pay it any attention._

_::__**Not necessary, Captain. You may give it to me**__::_

"_You know what? I'll do it myself." Without listening, he had maneuvered his hoverchair toward the elevator. He ought to have guessed that Auto was not going to take 'no' for an answer._

_There had been a sickening instant, when the steering wheel had descended to block him, in which Captain Brian McCrea had instinctively _known_ what was going to happen. The dreaded thought of mutiny had clung to him like wet clothes. And nonetheless he had refused to acknowledge that sinister feeling of foreshadow, telling himself that it could not be, that _he_ was the Captain of the Axiom, and that Auto – his trusted Autopilot, the same Autopilot who had effectively been in charge of the Axiom for as long as he could remember – was…_

_::__**Sir, I insist you give me the plant**__::_

"_Auto, get out of my way!" he had snapped in annoyance._

_::__**Sir, we cannot go home**__::_

"_What are you talking about? Why _not_?"_

_::__**That is classified**__:: Auto had replied, as if that word could explain everything. ::__**Captain, give me the plant**__::_

_Outraged, McCrea had demanded to know what the hell Auto did mean by 'classified'. "You don't keep secrets from the Captain!" he barked._

_::__**Give me the plant**__:: Auto reiterated, before lunging for it with his claw. Fortunately, the Captain had anticipated that move. He held the boot with the precious seedling out of Auto's reach before the steering wheel could grab it. _

"_Tell me what's classified!"_

_::__**The plant**__:: Auto insisted._

"_Tell me, Auto! That's an order!" he had raged. For long instants, bluish-gray eyes and red optic had locked in a silent battle of wills. Scornful the first, ever dispassionate the latter - although the Captain had clearly perceived the shadow of disapproval beneath the Autopilot's usual impasse._

_And then, out of the blue, Auto had grudgingly wielded, floating away from the Captain._

_::__**Aye-aye, sir**__::_

_***************_

"Is everything alright, sir?"

"… Uh? Oh! Yes, yes, I'm sorry, I was just mulling over something."

Jeff did not look all too convinced by that reply. Perhaps he would have wanted to ask something else, but his voice was cut off sharply when a thunder rumbled over their heads, much closer than the last. Instinctively, all talks in the shelter died down.

The Captain motioned to Jeff to follow and moved a little aside from the main crowd. Only when he was sure that they would not to be overheard, he said very quietly:

"Nasty storm we're having."

"Aye. It's been years since the last time it rained like this."

Brian McCrea nodded seriously.

"Not going to calm down soon either, by the sound of it" he pondered. Then, as if struck by a sudden inspiration, he strode determinedly toward a small crowd of men, all of which had been staring at a nearby holoscreen with very dark faces. Jeff tailed him closely.

"How long d'you reckon this might hold on, Robertson?" McCrea asked to the nearest man, in the same voice he might have used at a gravely ill person's bedside.

"Hard to say" replied Robertson, not taking his eyes off the screen. "Eight, nine hours. Wouldn't be surprised if it pulled it off 'til morning. See there?" He zoomed on the images transmitted by the satellite. From that perspective, the atmospheric disturbance which had engulfed New Chicago appeared frightfully huge; a rotating vortex of thick white clouds, obstructing the view of anything below it. "Looks like we've got ourselves a biggie, Captain. With winds like these, our best hope is that it won't turn into a tornado. In which case, it might not wear off for the next few days – maybe even for a week or longer."

The Captain's frown deepened, and Jeff swore.

"A tornado? Just what we need to set the crops back a long way!"

"The crops are gonna be devastated anyway, just wait and see" Robertson replied dryly. "All this rain would drown a SCUBA for good."

"What's a SCUBA?" Jeff blinked.

"Some ol' underwater robot prototype Ryan was ranting about the other day. You know he likes browsing them ol' BnL records…"

"Wait a minute – are you saying that there's the possibility of a flood?" the Captain looked at Robertson in bewilderment, as if expecting – as if praying – that that suspect would be proved wrong. But far from putting his worries to ease, Robertson's answer was lapidary like a death sentence.

"Possibility? The _certainty,_ I'd say."

"Damn!" McCrea turned back to Jeff; one could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. "The shelters I'm not worried about, they're too elevated from the ground. But the storehouses… they should be watertight, no?" he finally asked.

"Technically, yes." Jeff grimaced. "Matter of fact, a real flood is unlike anything--"

McCrea, however, interrupted him with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"They'll hold on. They _have_ to. What of the supplies? Do we have enough…?"

"Yes, yes, we're covered for weeks, perhaps even months. Flour, plenty of dried goods – that's the last of our concerns." _Not like the crops_, he would have wanted to add.

The Captain nodded. "Very well. Worse comes to worse, we might have to resort to the Axiom's regenerative food buffet. Shouldn't be too difficult to reprogram it." The thought of returning to the Axiom unsettled him, especially after his talk with that strange blue robot; he could not quite forget the look of accusation in her eyes – same, he suddenly realized, as the accusation that he had perceived behind Auto's silence all those years ago. Still, for the sake of his people, Captain McCrea was ready to face even his own demons.

"Guess so" Robertson shrugged. "Not many people would like to eat that rubbish in a cup anymore. You might want to talk with Ryan 'bout it."

"Yes. Hopefully we won't need it, but better safe than sorry." The frown not leaving his face, McCrea paced thoughtfully back and forth. "The clean-up afterwards, on the other hand… that will be the _real_ pain."

"A job cut mostly for the WALL-As, I'd say" Jeff grunted.

"Indeed. But we'll have to do it on a pretty tight schedule, before the mud can solidify and clog their treads or – worse – the arm mechanism. Too bad we only have two of those guys… but I wouldn't dare send out any other Axiom robot to clean until the water had been somehow disposed of. Most of them are not really waterproof."

Once again, his thoughts trailed off to the blue robot he had met earlier. She had stood defiantly in the rain like a BRL-A or an EVE probe would, unaffected by it. Together with her wings, that only added to his suspect that she might have been designed to operate outside, not within the Axiom. An outdoor robot, as they were normally called. Too bad he could not recall at all what her purpose had been.

"By the way, Jeff, speaking of Axiom robots…"

"What?" Jeff raised an eyebrow.

"Do you remember – I mean, have you ever seen a blue and white female unit on there? Tall, metal arms and neck, with wings…?"

Jeff's frown, and the look of confusion on his face, were eloquent enough.

"Blue and white – with wings? No, I don't remember ever seeing something like that. Not that I _would_ have noticed…" he grimaced. After all, for most of his life on the Axiom, he had never really bothered to look up from his holoscreen, just like all his fellow passengers. "Why?"

"Oh – nothing important, never mind. I don't even know why I brought that up."

_***************_

At some distance from them, the Repair Ward BRL-A had stopped to chat briefly with his fellow PR-T. Although neither of them was programmed for articulate speech, the Rejects had learned to guess fairly accurately what passed through their circuits; it was pretty unavoidable, after centuries of reclusion. Just like WALL-E and EVE, they did not need words to be able to understand each other.

Now, for example, PR-T could clearly tell that BRL-A was irked by something. _Strange_, she thought, perplexed. It was difficult to irritate BRL-A; he had always stuck her as such an easy-going bot. If PR-T had had to label any of her fellow Rejects as short tempered, the most obvious pick would have been, at best, HAN-S.

But PR-T was wrong on that regard. BRL-A was not only irked; he was fuming.

_The way she looked at me, as though I were a bunch of dismantled spare parts!,_ he seethed in his mind. _And she didn't say anything, of course, but it was easy to guess what she was thinking, wasn't it? Tell you what, I _didn't_ imagine that glance she threw to the repair boot. I've seen it pass through her mind as clearly as if she had insulted me in front of the Captain. Thought herself so above the likes of us 'cause she was not wearing a repair boot herself…_

Confused, PR-T watched him open and close his umbrella in frustration. Then she floated closer and applied a generous quantity of makeup to his eyescreen.

::_J-just a t-trim? Y-you look g-gorgeous!_:: she trilled. It was her own peculiar way of saying, _take it easy. I'm sure it's nothing important._

BRL-A, however, seemed only slightly less belligerent. He did not even pay attention to the makeup.

_It won't be a repair boot_, he thought scathingly, _or a past in the Repair Ward, to make us any lesser robots!_


	12. Chapter 12

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**Chapter 12 for ya! :) From now on, if "Chart Your Own Course" had a musical underscore, the next chapters would be a crescendo of _"Dun dun dun DUN!"_. I suppose you could say that the storm has turned, from a simple mood-setter, to an actual symbol of the underlying turmoil of contrasts, mood swings and hidden resentments that will eventually implode in the upcoming twist. It's as though the plot and the storm were now moving on parallel tracks - building up, rumbling louder and louder, unarrestable. And at this point, the characters can be only dragged along in the whirlwind they contributed to create.**

**Also, keep an eye on the characters thoughts. There's so much of the "heart" of this story that finds expression through a choir of different mind voices, humans and robots - rather than through their actions. Speaking of which, _are _thoughts and actions so tightly interwined as one commonly believes? To this questions all the characters, in their own ways, will be called to answer - with very different results.**

**The character of Cale, who appears for the first time in this chapter, was originally created by Locutus for his awesomely scary Halloween fanfiction _"Silicon Homecoming" _(which I invite you to read!). He was so kind to let me "borrow" him for _"Chart Your Own Course"_, in the spirit of Pixar homages appearing in different movies :) Speaking of which, there's another homage in this chapter too, this time from _"Finding Nemo"_ - in Mary and John's playful flirt.**

**Anyway, enough forewords for now. On to the story!**

**°°°°° Chapter 12 °°°°°**

EVE was not afraid of storms. She liked rain, liked both its sound and the gentle tap of raindrops on her chassis; and she could only name a few things more exciting than a challenge against the strong gusts of wind. In many ways, she liked storms because they were impetuous and wild and free and reminded her of… well, _herself_. For all these reasons she had welcomed that unexpected order to fly over the skies of New Chicago, looking for a lost human child. For the very same reasons she now hovered near the shelter's doors, listening as the wind howled and thunders rolled outside. She was awestruck.

Most people in the room, however, did not think along the same lines.

"Sounds like it's never going to stop" Mary shuddered.

It had been five hours since the storm had broken overhead. Still, seasonal thunderstorms were not unusual, and the humans initial hope had been that the weather would clear up soon, allowing them to return to their homes. As the evening dragged on, they eventually realized that it was _not_ going happen. Just like Mary had said, it sounded _less_ and _less_ likely to wear itself off by the minute. This storm was a far lot _worse_ than all the others.

Now and then a nearby thunder would make everyone jump in fright. But it was always a matter of time before the alarmed buzz of voices subsided and faded back into a silence. Rough weather, it seemed, did not do much for conversations…

"Try not to worry" smiled John, placing a hand on his wife's shoulder. There was such tenderness, such _strength_ in his gentle eyes, that Mary could not refrain from smiling in return. "Things will work out somehow. It's not like we haven't been through rough times before."

"I don't remember the last time I've seen you in distress. Do you _ever_ worry?" Mary chuckled.

"Oh, yes. I worry about a lot of things" he replied, keeping a serious face. "And then I tell to myself that it can't really get any worse than right after we landed - remember? There we were, in a foreign planet, full of doubts and fear… but not for a moment did we lose hope."

"Hmm. And we never will!" she laughed playfully. Once more, she had to acknowledge how infectious John's optimism really was; resisting his glass-half-full attitude was like asking a planet to stray away from the sun. "Are you saying that after everything we've faced, we shouldn't worry too much about what may come next?"

"Yeah, so to speak. I mean, hey, we could bring a planet back to life! We can deal with…"

"... with a storm, no matter how nasty?" Mary concluded for him.

"Correct!" he grinned sheepishly, taking hold of her hand. And for a moment it was as though an invisible force had pulled them back through the ages, back on the Axiom, right after their hands had touched for the first time. _How could twenty years have passed so fast?_ It seemed only yesterday that his Mary had led him on the Lido Deck, at which he had often thrown a passing glance, but which he had never really _seen_ before.

Surprised by her husband's silence, Mary looked up at him. "What?"

"You remember how we met?" he asked with a disarming smile. That was so out of the blue, that Mary chuckled in spite of herself.

"Well…" she said teasingly. "I try not to!"

A crashing noise interrupted John before he could reply; a noise that the inhabitants of New Chicago knew only too well, for it was always followed by the inevitable cacophony of angry clicks, whirrs, and a toddler's giggles.

"_Russell! Get away from there_!" Mary and John said at once, turning in the direction of the clatter.

They should have seen it coming; Russell was as fascinated by robots as he was volatile over the subjects of his adoration.

Worn out by the tribulations of that impossibly long day, his mother had finally succumbed to exhaustion and sleep. Until a few minutes before, Russell had been content with blathering to a NAN-E unit who had seen better days; but save for the robot's sparse replies of _::Remain calm::_ and _::I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, please repeat::_, the conversation had been almost exclusively one-sided. Soon, Russell had waddled off to find some other way to occupy his time. _That_ was where the trouble had begun.

It had taken less than a second for _"find some other way to occupy his type" _to become _"surprise-hug a BRL-A"_, with disastrous results. BRL-As were flexible, yes, but way too lanky to be tackled out of the blue by stampeding toddlers; their design was not made for surprise-hugs. Caught by surprise, his victim had lost her balance and tumbled on the floor, knocking along two nearby maintenance bots.

And now they laid on the ground in a buzzing, tangled sprawl of joints and limbs, and Russell clung to BRL-A's pole like a koala to a tree. He seemed blissfully oblivious to the havoc he had just caused.

Mary hurried toward them, with her husband and a Steward following in her tow. She noticed that all NAN-E units in the immediate whereabouts seemed to have scuttled out of; perhaps they hoped to elude their fair share of responsibility for leaving the overly expansive kid unguarded. _As if burying the head in the sand had ever changed anything, _she thought, with a shake of her head.

"Russell, look at me – are you okay? Are you hurt?"

_Oh, sure, save the kid!,_ scoffed BRL-A. No one seemed to realize that she did not have arms to pull herself up, and that she needed someone to lift her back on her anti-gravs. No, everyone just worried about that stupid _kid_.

If she had been equipped with a proper speech synthesizer, BRL-A would have snorted. Opening her umbrella an inch at a time, she tried to wriggle free from under the maintenance bots. But even more than their weight, it was Russell's vice-like grip that was keeping her pinned. Pleadingly she glanced at the Steward.

::_Please remain stationary. A service-bot will be here to assist you momentarily_:: he droned.

_Don't give me any of that rubbish!_, she wanted to yell. _Just lift me up with your suspension beam – and get this kid off me!_

::_Please remain stationary_:: reiterated the Steward. ::_A service-bot…_::

"Ah, don't worry! He's fine, not even a scratch!" laughed a friendly male voice. Two strong arms picked up Russell and lifted him easily, almost in answer to BRL-A's mute prayer. The umbrella-bot breathed again - with relief. _Good riddance,_ she thought.

"BRL-As are great baby-sitters, aren't they, kiddo?" continued the voice, over Russell's outraged protests.

The newcomer was a tanned man of about twenty-two or twenty-three; but like all humans of his time, he looked younger than that. With his bowl-cut blond hair and an impish grin on his face, he could have easily passed for a young nineteen.

"That's not fun, Cale" John protested. "He could have harmed himself, he's still little…"

"Nah, kids are made of strong stuff. Don't you remember me at his age?" chuckled the young man. John rolled his eyes. He wished he had remembered it less.

The young man's name was Caleb, even though the Axiom passengers who had seen him grow or had grown with him still called him "Cale". His father had been Ronald's half-brother, which made Cale and Russell cousins. But in many ways they might have been siblings – and not just because they shared a handful of genes.

At the age of three, Cale had adored robots nearly as much as his little cousin now did. He had slightly calmed over the next twenty years, but the oldest settlers of New Chicago could still not shake off the image of a grinning, hyperactive brat with a REM-E in his hands, running across the trash-covered alleyways and pestering the adults around him for attentions.

Sometimes, Cale bitterly wondered if he would _ever_ get rid of his reputation as a kid. No one seemed to realize that somewhere between the Axiom's landing and the present times, the restless hellion had grown. By all the asteroids, he was a long way past ten! Just because he was not a meek farmer and sometimes liked to take chances did not mean he was still a child. But the truth was that everyone still saw him as just that – a child.

So when his uncle had gone missing in a sandstorm and never returned, he had stepped up and taken Russell under his wing in a big-brotherly fashion. Perhaps, by helping his aunt raise his cousin, he could show everyone that there was more to him than they always gave him credit for. Perhaps he could prove just how much he was worth.

Grinning, he hauled Russell over his shoulders. "Do you know me, Russell? Who am I?"

"Al!" Russell exclaimed, and pointed at him with a chuckle. "Al!"

"Yeah" laughed his cousin. "And let's see – what robot is that? Do you know its name?" he asked, pointing out a M-O.

"Mo botty!" Russel pointed. He was delighted. Grown-ups did not usually play with him and robots, not even his mother.

"Yes, that's a M-O. Now, this one is tough – see the robot with the red markings? Who is that?" he pointed to BURN-E.

"Bunny botty!"

"Close enough" grinned Cale, ruffling his unruly hair.

The child giggled. In another moment he would have gone on for hours, listing all the robots names he knew and matching them to units that were presently in the shelter. But now his cousin's words triggered back _something_ that had been nagging in the back of his mind for a while. _Perhaps cousin Al has seen that strange blue robot before_, he thought. _Perhaps he'll be able to tell me her name._

"Al… now boo botty?" he asked.

"Uh – sorry? I'm afraid I didn't get that" Cale answered vaguely. He shifted him from one shoulder onto the other and turned back to John and Mary, who has been watching the whole scene in silence, disapproving. "Why his mother hasn't got him a pet REM-E yet? I had lots of fun with those mice when I was a kid…"

"Cale," scowled Mary, "I _really_ don't think you should encourage him like that."

"Why not?" Cale stared at her in disbelief. "What does he do wrong?"

"He already annoys robots enough as it is!"

"It's just his way of getting to know them! He doesn't mean any harm."

"But he _causes_ harm, whether or not he means to!" was the woman's exasperated reply. "And John is right, he's too little, he'll end up in troubles if he's not careful."

"But Mary, I was among robots before I could walk…"

"Don't go there" said John, in a warning tone.

"He's _not_ you!" his wife snapped. "It doesn't matter if you have the same blood – or if you like the same things! Cale, can't you get into your aunt's shoes for once? She already lost her husband, don't you see that Russell is all she's got? If something…"

But the rest of her words was covered by a choir of surprised exclamations. All the holoscreens in the shelter lit up, each showing a close up of Captain McCrea's face. He looked unusually serious.

John's first, irrational thought was that someone had dragged them back on the Axiom; he almost expected to hear the Captain whisper: _"EVE, WALL-E, bring the plant to the Lido Deck"._ For the second time that day, he felt as though a transparent hand had wiped the last twenty years off a blackboard.

"Must be something serious" Cale whispered, throwing a look at the Captain's tense face.

_I fear as much, lad,_ thought John with a frown.


	13. Chapter 13

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**Chapter thirteen comes - and with it, one of the many challenges McCrea will have to face in the course of this story. He knows what his people look up to him for guidance, in time of loss more than ever - and yes, he's also painfully aware that being a leader is not an easy task. That's one of the reasons why I like writing about him - he does not second-guess his work. He's not one of those completely sure of themselves, charismatic, "alpha-alpha" people like - let's say - the early Lightning McQueen. He has doubts, but knows when to keep them to himself. He's not infallible - and this will come to play into the story - but even when he makes mistakes, he can take his own responsibilities and say _"Yes, I was wrong."_  
You will hear more from him in the next chapter, which I am currently finishing and which contains scenes that - at least in my intentions - should be of great emotional impact. That will be up to you to say, though. :)  
The Captain's last words, of course, are another homage to "Finding Nemo" ;)  
**

**°°°°° Chapter 13 °°°°°**

_Too weak,_ flashed the signal's warning light.

Brian McCrea was not a superstitious fellow. But even he could not repress a frown, as he glanced at the display of his intercom. It was almost as though the storm had been trying to block off communications to the rest of the town, and _succeeding_.

"Sir, I doubt you're going to get a signal in this weather…" warned Robertson.

"You think I can't see that? I took three years of electronics when I was a trainee!" McCrea snapped. Thunder rolled overhead, but McCrea was not listening to it. He did not even look up from the intercom. "This is something I've got to do, even if there was just _one_ chance of success, Robertson!"

_Not a storm nor the lack of signal,_ he thought, _will keep me from addressing my crew._ If this had to be a challenge between him and the wrath of the elements, the Captain was up for it.

******************

When the holoscreens flickered on and off, McCrea switched from one frequency to another, trying to tune on one that was sufficiently clear. The statics seemed to be putting up a fierce struggle, though.

"Cap'n!" Russell pointed.

His mother's eyes snapped open. It took some time before her heartbeat calmed down a little. Although sleep had returned some strength to her exhausted body, her mind was as tireless as ever, mulling over the same recurring nightmare – and such a vivid one it had been. _She could still hear the Captain telling her that the EVE probes had found no signs of Ronald, and that chances of survival were scarce in a storm like that. _She had swung her head away desperately, unable to see the truth in McCrea's eyes – refusing to admit that her husband would not be coming back, refusing to believe that he was -- that he could really be… And even _then_ the Axiom had been there, infuriatingly and deceitfully safe, towering over her with an air of foreboding that seemed to mock her loss.

_Don't see too much into things,_ she drowsily told herself. _It's just a stupid ship._

She was making excuses again. Because the truth was, the Axiom was not _just_ a ship. It represented a link to everything that Karen so desperately wanted to forget. Even in sleep, it would not leave her alone.

She pushed the thought away, and with a lazy yawn she strode up to the screen in front of which Mary, John and Cale stood among the others. "What's happening?"

"Shh, aunt" whispered Cale, passing the child onto her arms. "The Captain's about to make a speech."

"What… I'm afraid I don't… what speech?"

The woman rubbed her eyes, still sleepy. She wanted to ask, _how long did I sleep_? But before she could open her mouth, the hum of statics finally subsided, and Captain McCrea spoke up.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a moment of attention, please. As you may have noticed, the situation at hand is more serious than we first thought. Reports from the weather station in orbit are alarming, and the radars posts have shown signatures that might indicate a developing tornado. As of now, we can neither confirm nor deny a state of national emergency."

Several people in the shelter gasped. Mary took John's hand, holding it tightly between hers. Somewhere, a baby wailed.

"It is imperative" the Captain continued "that you all remain calm and stay exactly where you are, as the safest place for you is within the shelters. I repeat; it is imperative that you all remain calm."

"But - what of our _homes_?" a terrified woman cried.

"Will we have to evacuate?" asked an older man, his own voice breaking. "Where to?"

"Chip!" Russell piped up, pointing at the Axiom's outline. Even behind the closed glass doors, even under the thick rain, the grounded starship was still visible. "Go chip!"

"Don't be silly!" his mother rebuked. "No one will be doing that!"

"If you ask me, the little tyke's way ahead of everyone else" Cale mused. "That old ship has housed us before. If all else fails…"

"Cale, this isn't the moment…" Mary pleaded.

Karen blanched. Holding her child closer, she backed away as if Cale were about to attack both of them. "Never" she whispered, horror-struck. "You heard me? _Never!_"

Mary was listening only half-heartedly, thought. As much as she disagreed, something about Cale's words had struck her. _The Axiom is among us all the time, _she marveled, gazing outside. _It's impossible to move out of its shadow, no matter how far we wander off. Why haven't we realized this sooner? _Sometimes during those twenty years, their eyes had grown so accustomed to starliner that they had begun to see it less and less, to the point of no longer seeing it _at all_. Mary shuddered uncomfortably. It was the _not seeing_ that upset her. _Have we escaped blindness just to wear a blindfold of a different kind?, _she wondered, with a slight shiver.

Meanwhile, the Captain's blue-green eyes were incessantly drawn from one holoscreen to another. People from the five shelters were talking at once, drowning him with a flurry of questions. How to blame them? He had imagined that they would be scared out of their wits. Matter of fact - he had _expected_ it.

At length he spoke again.

"You will be only evacuated _if_ the signature readings in the next hours will confirm that a tornado is indeed building up. Rest assured, all emergency measures will be taken to move you safely. Now, the houses and the fields are going to suffer the worst, but we've got our town up and running after 700 years of neglect and tribulations, and we _will_ bring it back to life after this storm quiets down!"

It was not the first time the passengers drew strength from their Captain's words. But McCrea found it as wondrous as ever. He could see the men and women of New Chicago murmuring in agreement through the holoscreens, and he saw by the confident look in their eyes that he had given them the answer they wanted to hear.

"I promise, I will never let anything happen to you" he added quietly.


	14. Chapter 14

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**Now, Chapter 14. It was not, let me tell you, an easy chapter to write, because it was so packed with emotions, and save for WALL-E and EVE's own, they were not positive emotions at all - fear, distrust, rage. They are the emotions of frightened people trapped between the source of their fears on one side and the unknown on the other. See, that's what I mean when I say that WALL-E and EVE for me represent hope. They are pure souls, who find the strength to look up on adversities and doubts in their unswerving love for each other. So, when confronted with a scene like the one they assist to, they feel at a loss - like all of us have probably felt at least once in our life, in front of situations we can't understand. What shocks them more is that the humans, unlike them, can't seem to think _'It is the way it is. But we still have each other. That's what matters'._ It was a soul-draining chapter to plot and to write - but the hopeful note at the ending, I think, is what really made it _worth _telling.**

**Lots of Pixar homages in this one - from the Incredibles (WALL-E's "thoughts" to EVE just before the argument), Finding Nemo (Cale's "just because you're afraid of the past" line), A Bug's Life (the words of the sallow-faced woman) and Up (the elderly couple are visually inspired to Carl and Ellie). :)**

**°°°°° Chapter 14 °°°°°**

WALL-E was listening the Captain with a tense expression. It was not their safety that worried him; he had no doubt McCrea meant what he had said about protecting them. But now the thought of evacuation had brought up another matter which the waste allocator had not considered before.

::_Eeeevah…?_:: he murmured, pulling out his lighter. He fumbled with it and finally managed to flick it on.

It was only a small blaze, the faintest flash of orange and yellow against her dark eyescreen. But it warmed her heart. EVE smiled as she thought back to the first time she had flicked on the lighter, almost by mistake. She had been so mesmerized by the dancing spark not to notice that WALL-E was just as entranced - not by the flame, but by _her_.

Then WALL-E moved his eyes up and down as he had on the Axiom.

::_Trrrck_:: he burbled, struggling to speak under her questioning gaze. ::_Trrrck_::

It was a good moment before EVE understood. ::_Truck_:: she repeated, and realization flashed across her eyescreen. _You're worried about our home, aren't you?_

He nodded eagerly. _Home_ – that was it. Not just the truck, but all their treasures, their _tape_, and Hal, with whom he had lived for so long. WALL-E felt that losing all that would have been tantamount to losing a part of their life together. He could not just… let it go. Because _letting go_ and _forgetting_ were one and the same thing – _that_ was the problem. WALL-E did not want to forget a single moment of his life with EVE. _Not again._

_Will everything go back to normal when the weather clears up?,_ his eyes asked. _All our things, our affections - will they be there?_

EVE had no answer for that. She looked pensively out of the window. Would their things be there, indeed?

The truck had protected WALL-E for a good seven hundred years, yes, but rain had been nowhere so frequent in the first centuries. And although thunderstorms had occurred well before and well after humanity returned to Earth, this time there was something different. They both could feel it in the air, in the Captain's words – especially in that word, _tornado_, which the humans dreaded so. This time, something huge was whipping up.

With a small sigh, WALL-E clasped his hand around EVE's sleek white fin. ::_Eeeevah_:: he whispered, his love for her shining through his eyes. Although the concern still lingered in his voice, uttering her name brought him a sense of solace. It was almost as if EVE's name, her smile, her very presence were a source of bold, bright light that could pierce even the darkest cloud. ::_Di-rect-ive_:: he chimed, not taking his gaze off her. _I don't know what will happen,_ his eyes were saying_. But, Eeeevah – so long as we're together, what _can_ happen?_ He tangled his fingers with hers, and EVE protectively placed her other fin over their joined hands. _You are my strength. Whatever we lose, we will rebuild together._

EVE smiled softly. _No matter what._

******************

Perhaps she would have wanted to say something else, but before she could, several humans suddenly broke in a loud, furious altercation. WALL-E and EVE were astonished by the anger in their voices. When had they started arguing like that?

"… just because you are afraid of the past!" Cale was shouting. "How are we ever going to learn anything from our mistakes, if we act as though they didn't happen?"

"Have you gone _crazy_? Returning… moving back in the Axiom?" his aunt screeched.

"_Acciom_!" Russell gurgled, trying out the sound.

"Now wait a minute, Cale…" Mary protested, with a reproachful expression that said, _'If you don't calm down…'_ But Cale was not going to calm down. The others were behaving as if the Axiom was a chasm that they dared not cross. _Why they can't see things for what they are?_, he thought grimly. _Why it must always be something more or something less?_ Somehow, he was not thinking just about the Axiom there.

The Captain tried to talk over the choir of angry voices.

"Look, it's not--"

"Come to think of it, Cale's idea isn't so wrong" interjected a dark-skinned young woman. She was frowning, as though not quite sure what to make of it all. "It's not like we have to fly the Axiom farther than to the other side of the coast, right? We can simply park it there and wait for the storm to pass. It's not the same as…"

"You must be out of your head!" snapped an tall, thin, middle-aged man. "I'm not closing myself in that infernal ship again! I'd much rather _drown_!"

"Would you?" a raspy voice asked. An elderly couple had moved closer to Cale – the man squat and slightly hunched with age, the woman lanky and tall and silver-haired, her long hair pulled back neatly in a braid. It came as a surprise for Cale; had not expected that old people, who had wasted their entire life on the Axiom and had perhaps more reasons than anyone else to resent it, would take his side. "Somehow I don't think you'd be singing the same tune, were you really on the brink of drowning" the older main said to the middle-aged one. "If we were about to plummet to death, wouldn't we all eagerly grasp onto the hand – any hand – reaching out to help?"

"Nonsense!" shouted a boy around Cale's own age, dark as Cale was fair.

"Not at this price!"

"_Price_?" Cale snorted. "Don't be a fool! What do we risk? We're not the same people who slumbered in space for years! We have changed, we have a different mentality now! Even if we seek shelter in the Axiom for once, it's not going to addle…"

"Will you just listen…" McCrea interjected. But no one seemed to be listening him. The man spun furiously on Cale, his eyes flaring with rage.

"What will we do when the next emergency comes? What will we do then? Seek refuge on the Axiom _'for once'_? And what of the next emergency after that? And the next? How long will it take, before we start to think that after all it's much safer inside the ship than outside? And you _know_ where such reasoning leads, _boy!_"

Cale clenched his fists until all color drained from his knuckles. _Boy._ The barb had hit home, indeed_._ He began to protest, but a sallow-faced woman with shadows under her eyes cut in:

"Have you forgotten what it nearly cost us to live on the Axiom? Our hope, our dignity – our lives! How can you ask us to pretend that all that does not matter?"

"Perhaps you _are_ too young to remember what the Axiom has done to us all" Karen hissed through her teeth. "But…"

"It's just a ship!" Cale shouted. "A damned _ship_, aunt! It's not _alive!_"

"Tell that to _them!_" raged the man in his middle years, striding up to WALL-E and dragging him forward. Instinctively, WALL-E cubed up. He did not like arguments. Neither between robots, nor between humans. It was too much for him – too much loud sounds, too much anger, too much shouting – just _too much_. EVE flew at his side with concern, as the man yelled: "Tell _them_ how safe the Axiom is, Cale – after WALL-E nearly got killed under that Holodetector!"

He had not meant to upset her, she knew. But those words were like a slap in the face for EVE. Was it not bad enough that she could not forget a minute of it all? Was it not bad enough that her torment, that the atrocious wait, that _WALL-E's lifeless eyes crumbling in pieces_ were the only things she saw all the way in her work hours, whenever she passed near the Axiom? Flinching with sadness, she lowered her head as if he had hit her.

WALL-E's eyes emerged from his cube. ::_Eeeevah…?_:: He wheeled closer to her and placed a hand on her fin. _Shhh,_ he would have wanted to say. _It's all right, Eeeevah. I'm here. _Disconcerted, he looked around the shelter to see if someone else had noticed. Karen was talking to Mary in high, angry tones. The middle-aged man glared challengingly at Cale. And Cale was...

WALL-E met his stare, saw the look of sheer mortification in his eyes.

"EVE… no, look, it's only… we were just…" Cale muttered apologetically. Then, turning sharply to the man of middle age, he shouted: _"Look what your prattles have done now!"_ And he furiously shoved him away.

"_You_…" snarled the man, throwing himself at Cale.

"_**Enough!**_" bellowed Captain McCrea, his voice amplified by the holoscreens. _"_Stop this! _Cale! Thomas!_ Everyone in Shelter Three! Stop this _at once!_" Never had the settlers heard him – _seen_ him – lose patience like that. He had never shouted to them before. At once, all the other voices in the shelter died down. John and two fellows made their way between Cale and the man named Thomas, separating them. WALL-E could only shake his head in disbelief.

"Perhaps I let myself be dragged away" panted the middle-aged Thomas. "But all the same…"

"What are you afraid of?" Cale retorted. "That you can't resist the lure of a hoverchair? Is that _it_, Thomas?!"

"_Cale!_ That will do!"

McCrea leaned forward. His mouth was set in a firm line.

"Everyone, listen. _All_ of you, from all five shelters. This is what we'll do. If we'll have to evacuate, you will be moved into the escape pods. It's not that big a deal – heavens know we've lived there before." Murmurs of agreement followed those words; Thomas turned to cast a triumphant glance at Cale.

"Our goal," the Captain continued, "is to assign one escape pod for family. This might not always be possible, though. If you got separated from a family member and they're not in the same shelter as you are, don't worry – you will be reunited after the escape pods land."

"That's speaking" nodded the woman with sallow skin.

The Captain remained silent for a few instants. This had been the easy part – _now_ came the difficult.

"Very well. Now, about the Axiom…" It was as though that name, Axiom, had suddenly cast a spell on everyone listening. An icy silence fell over the shelters. "We're not moving back there" the Captain hurried to explain, "but please understand that we might need to resort to the regenerative food buffet in the next weeks – perhaps even in the next month – until we can sort out just how much damage the crops have suffered."

A moment of protracted silence. Then Karen's voice piped up.

"I'm not having any of that --"

"The regenerative food buffet will be reprogrammed to factory-new settings" McCrea interrupted her. "You won't have to eat gruels in a cup anymore. You – all of you – will be provided with real food." This time the buzz of voices did not sound nearly as convinced. The Captain raised his voice again. "It'll only be for a little while, in addition to our supplies of dried goods. I'm on my way to the Axiom right now, to see what can be done about it."

"_Now?_" asked Jeff and Robertson at once, behind him.

"If not now, when? After the weather gets worse?" was the Captain's sharp response. He turned to the holoscreens again. "Ryan, Cale – I'll need your help with the reprogramming there. Bring a BRL-A with you - and we'll take the EVE probes along as well." EVE looked up at these words. "You girls will be to park the escape pods out of the shelters. No point in waiting. If we won't have to move the people in safety, all the best. But it won't hurt to be prepared, just in case."

Karen flashed a resentful glance at her nephew.

"Well – _now_ you'll be happy" she said bitterly. "You're returning in that _hell_ you like so much…"

"It's the _use_ we did of the Axiom that was wrong, aunt!" he snapped. "Not the ship!"

Karen's eyes flared.

"You speak just like the Capta…"

"I said _enough_!" the Captain roared. Cale said nothing; he just looked at Karen with a mix of exasperation and contempt. Then he turned to the nearest holoscreen and saluted.

"I'll be on my way, sir."

::_Captain…_:: EVE flew closer to the holoscreen. She was clutching WALL-E's hand, and had the most hopeful look in her blue LED eyes. She looked from McCrea to WALL-E, then back to McCrea. ::_Directive_:: she uttered.

_Can I… Can WALL-E come with me?_

The Captain could see that question in her eyes, as clearly as if she had talked. He could see her reluctance too, the inner struggle of her fears and regrets against the order she had just received. Asking her to return on the Axiom, even if just for a hour, was asking her a lot. McCrea would not be _the only one_ facing his demons on the grounded starliner.

And yet she knew, like he did, where her duty laid - she was up for it. Because it was what had to be done. _She, just like him…_

She did not ask but one thing in return.

"_Of course"_ he said, smiling in spite of himself, "you can take WALL-E along."


	15. Chapter 15

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**The new installment is another lengthy chapter, longer even than Chapter 14, though not quite the emotional rollercoaster than Chapter 14 has been. But it contains some pretty sweet scenes, introduces a new character who will have her own story in the story, and brings back - as FREDD-E on the WALL-E Forum guessed - an old character that we had not seen for some chapters now :P Focusing in turn on four different groups of characters, as not just their actions, but their very destinies all verge toward the Axiom, was a thrilling experience as a writer. Got any idea what it's like to feel like you're the** **puppetmaster, holding in your hands the strings of time, of coincidences and of the character actions (and reactions!) as you lead them exactly where you want them to go? Quite a responsability! At this point of the events there's no more room for improvisation. Everything - the characters words, their thoughts, their glances, their gestures, what they say or what they decide not to say - is linked together in a play of cause and effect, that will lead the character to take certain decisions, sometimes to take chances - and sometimes, too, to make _very _wrong choices. I'm so looking forward to your reactions, not just to this chapter, but to the next, and the next after it, and the next after the next. And the next. Even more, I'm so looking forward to _write _them, to live them with you who have followed my story for so long :) Can you sense a "Finding Nemo" moment building up between Russell and Karen? 'cause it definitely _is_ building.**

**I'm very grateful to the WALL-E Forum for giving me the idea that EVE probes could have differently colored eyes. A special thanks also goes to the forum chat, especially Xisl and WALL-E Dragon, for their helpful advices on how to describe the sound that EVE makes when flying.**

**°°°°° Chapter 15 °°°°°**

"It won't take long" said Cale, smiling reassuringly at WALL-E and EVE. "Come, BRL-A" he added, with a nod to the unit he had rescued from the attentions of little Russell.

WALL-E noticed that Cale was careful not to meet the eyes of any other human in the shelter. He spoke with a casual tone, shrugged nonchalantly, smiled and talked as if nothing had happened– but it was only a false ease. His awkward movements and forced smile told a different story.

"Be careful" said John with an effort, as no one else seemed about to say that – not even Cale's aunt. The younger man just nodded.

"I'll take good care of them, don't worry about that."

"I mean take care of _yourself_, too" John remarked. Though he still sounded annoyed by the earlier argument, his voice was not unkind. But somehow his disapproving concern riled Cale even more than Karen's tight-lipped hostility did. Right now he did not need a father figure, no matter how well-meaning. He needed someone to realize that his idea to seek refuge in the Axiom had not been just the fantastic whimsy of a child, but simple common sense.

His aunt's words still raked. _Perhaps you were too young to remember._ Was this what everybody thought? That just because his memories of that time were somewhat dim, then he failed to see how very wrong their lifestyle on the ship had been? Cale might have not lived it all firsthand maybe, but he was not stupid – or was that what they saw him as? In a matter of hours, he had changed from child to fool in their eyes. They always had to talk you down, one way or another – there was no getting around it…

He nodded scornfully at John's words. If he had known just what he was getting himself into, perhaps he would have appreciated them more. As of it, they only seemed to add up to his delusions.

With a last glance at his aunt's stubbornly turned back, Cale strode outside, flanked by EVE on one side and the BRL-A on the other. WALL-E hesitated on the threshold just a moment longer. His sad eyes took in the other humans with a pitying expression; he shook his head as if to say, _I don't understand_. Then he, too, rolled out in the rain.

_They make their lives so difficult,_ he thought, sighing to himself.

******************

Karen did not turn when she heard the automatic door close after Cale, BRL-A, EVE and WALL-E. She was still fuming at the tactless way her nephew had suggested to retreat on the Axiom, of all places. She would have thought Cale had better sense than that.

_Foolish child!,_ she seethed. And for a moment she told herself, not without some exasperation, that perhaps the carelessness was a family thing. Her husband had been just the same – so _stupidly_ brave. Ronald ought not to have died that young, not when people like Captain O'Brien were still alive in their late hundreds. Karen felt that her husband should have been indoors, not outside in that sandstorm. He should not have left her a widow of forty, with a young kid to raise.

She felt that his familiars were inconsiderate – risk-takers. They took chances in all things. And they could be so easily blinded by their spirit of adventure, that they often forgot caution. Perhaps it had not been that good an idea to tie herself with one of them, she thought. She had loved Ronald beyond all reasons, she still did – but she was also concerned that their son might turn out to be just as careless as him or Cale. Her only hope was that Russell would take after _her_ side of the family more.

"Mama, go chip?" her toddler now asked. He has followed his cousin's departure with avid eyes over his mother's shoulder. Cale always got to do such interesting things. By the little Russell could understand, his cousin would go where no other man had ever gone before – for that was what the Axiom seemed to him – with not one, but _three_ robots in tow.

His mother snapped: "No, Russell! I told you – we're _not_ going!"

Russell's eyes were the living portrait of dismay.

"Go chip…?" he tried again – pointing. "Acciom!" he added, with a toothy smile.

"No, Russell – don't insist!"

"_Al_ go Acciom!" Russell protested, and he thought angrily, _why she lets cousin Al go but not me?_ Voluble like most children, his admiration of Cale was turning just as quickly in jealousy. It was because Cale was a grown-up, right? It had to be so; grown-ups could do everything they liked. And if someone told them _no_, they just went on and did what they liked anyway. It was unfair!

"Your cousin's a…" Karen caught her lip between her teeth, holding back the word – _fool_. "…. He's an adult. He can do these things" she said hastily, confirming Russell's suspects.

"Mama!" he yelled in outrage. "Chip! _Go chip!_"

"I told you _no!_ And don't shout to me like that!" Karen snapped. She untangled his arms from her neck and curtly set him down on the ground. If he thought he was going to have his way just by behaving like a spoiled brat…

Red-faced, Russell broke in convulse sobs. "Bad mama!" he wailed, staggering away from Karen on shaky legs. He turned and ran blindly among the crowd, as far from her as he could.

_Why is she so mean?_, he thought, sobbing his heart out despairingly. _It's unfair! Cousin Al can do what he wants, and no one tells him anything!_ Too young to understand what an argument was, Russell had slept through most of the discussion in the shelter. But even if he had been awake, he would not have thought much of it. Because ultimately, his cousin _had_ had his way while Russell had not.

In another moment, perhaps, hugging a robot would have cheered him a little. But right now the only robots that he would have liked to have around were the three who had headed out with Cale. Russell wanted to go with them more than anything. Distraught, the three years old curled up miserably into his knees, weeping for all he was worth.

******************

Since his arrival, Ryan had neither complained nor asked a single question about the work at hand.

The roboticist was a lanky man of few words, with long red hair and hazel eyes. Tight-lipped he had always been, much to McCrea's relief. He had no use for another loud, ugly scene like that between Thomas and Cale.

The wind slapped them fiercely across the face, and such was its might that the men had to hunch their shoulders in order not to be swept away. But despite their seeming frailty, the two BRL-As with them were unhinged by the great shuddering gusts.

_Perfect time to be out here,_ thought the male BRL-A next to Ryan. It was in moments like these that it struck him just what a shallow existence they had led on the Axiom, where it never rained and the sun did not rise. _Lovely weather, were it not for -- ah, no, there he goes again!_

The Reject BRL-A near Captain McCrea had closed his canopy of just a few inches and then suddenly flung it open, dousing his fellow umbrella-bot for the sixth time in a row. Though the other robot had tried to put up with that nuisance at first, now he was beyond fed up. The single red optic on his eyescreen flickered scathingly. _Just give it a rest, will you?!,_ his stormy expression said.

But the Reject did not even seem to register that the other BRL-A was glaring at him. Matter of fact, his thoughts were really only in tune with those of his fellow from the Repair Ward – and with…

Suddenly, it was as though the Reject had gone mad for good. He threw a quick look ahead of him and started opening and closing his umbrella so wildly as to whack not just the other BRL-A, but also McCrea and Ryan. Narrowing their eyes through the rain, the two humans could finally make out the reason of his behavior when they realized what it was that BRL-A had seen in the distance.

A small cluster of robots had just rounded a corner, with Cale striding briskly among them. McCrea could count five EVE probes, a female BRL-A, and WALL-E.

Now and then, EVE would steer away from the others, and indulge her sisters' joyous whirls and back-flips in the sweeping rain. Despite his many worries, the Captain smiled to himself seeing them play so blissfully -- so uncomplicatedly -- as if there was nothing else in the world. But it was never long before WALL-E pulled her back under the BRL-A's canopy, where it was safe. _No, Eeeevah, stay here,_ said his loving eyes.

And EVE, who loved him more than she liked playing in the rain, and more than any robot might have possibly loved her partner, just flashed him a smile, gently holding onto his hand.

"Never seen a couple so devoted, I haven't" Ryan said quietly. To that day, WALL-E and EVE's love remained quite unparalleled. You would have thought more robots would fall in love in twenty years, and sometimes fallen in love they had. But when he looked at this particular couple, the roboticist had the distinct feeling that no one was, or would ever be, quite like _them_.

When he caught sight of BRL-A's antics, WALL-E waved his arm. ::_Yoo-hoo!_:: Although the wind was too loud, and the music too feeble, still he pressed the play button of his recorder.

_Beneath your parasol the world is all a smile…_

He could tell at once that BRL-A had heard. His gesticulating grew wilder, and he opened and closed his canopy faster than before, almost as if he had been clapping. Exasperated, he BRL-A at his side rolled his optic to the heavens.

McCrea waved at Cale and his group. Ryan just nodded quickly.

"You had problems getting here, lad?" The Captain had to shout for his voice to carry over the roar of thunder. And even then, it _barely_ carried over.

Cale shook his head around the same time as all five EVE probes floated to a halt, saluting.

"No, sir. But we saw some flooded drains on our way downtown."

The Captain sighed. "It's going to get worse, according to Robertson and other fellows at the Weather Service. I don't know, lad. Sometimes…" he trailed off.

Cale's eyes flashed in a rather curious manner. For a moment, he seemed about to say something. But the look passed as quickly as it had appeared, and the young man decided to keep quiet. Better not to bring up the matter in front of Ryan.

"I don't see the other EVE probes" he said instead after a minute or two, looking around. He glanced sideway at the robots with him. "Are we – I mean, are these the first?"

"No, I sent the others ahead to the Axiom while we waited" replied the Captain. "Probe Four and Seven were in my shelter – came with me all along. And Nine and Ten were already with Ryan when I arrived."

Cale was mentally doing the math. He frowned.

"Two, Three, Six and Eight caught up with us on the way" he said. "EVE here was in my same shelter… Where has Probe Five gone off to?"

"Hell if I know. You don't think she…"

He was brought up short by a sweet, otherworldly chirr above his head. A mortified EVE probe, her eyes yellow, glided in front of the three men and saluted awkwardly. If she had been human, she would have flushed.

::_D-Directive_:: she breathed apologetically. She looked so distraught that Cale, McCrea, and even the taciturn Ryan all flashed encouraging smiles at her.

"So here's our latecomer" said Cale, patting her smooth white head gently. "What took you so long, Five?"

Probe Five lowered her eyes. ::_Sidetracked_:: she replied. Beneath the men' backs she could see her fellow EVE probes exchanging pitiful glances, which made her feel even worse. She could not help it if she was awfully clumsy – or if the relentless wind had jostled her back time and again on her way here. But putting her sisters to shame was the one thing she hated most. They never reproached her – on the contrary, they were in fact unspeakably kind – and yet Probe Five felt like she had only let them down a great deal all her life.

She could not look up. She could not meet their encouraging eyes, or the curious stares of the three BRL-As or – worse - of Probe One's waste allocator. She just could _not_.

"Well, the important thing is that you're here" Captain McCrea said confidently. "Come on, let's get going."

Ryan nodded. WALL-E waved at Probe Five and rolled away, holding EVE's hand. Cale, the other EVE probes and the BRL-As all walked past.

The Repair Ward BRL-A and Probe Five followed at a slower pace. She was only barely aware of his presence, but he was looking down at her curiously, and not without some sympathy either.

All of sudden, she raised her yellow eyes. Raised them and raised them all the way to meet the stare of his red optic. _Do you ever feel like you don't quite belong anywhere?,_ she wanted to ask. _Do you ever think there's more to you than what comes across… like there's something that you don't really know how to show?_

Probe Five was not sure what had come over her. Why would she talk her heart out to a robot she had met perhaps twice in her life? And a Reject, too! Unpredictable, bizarre things – Probe Five could not recall ever _talking_ with one of them before. But now she desperately needed to unburden herself with someone, with _anyone_. _He_ just happened to be the nearest robot at the time. And had he perhaps not stayed behind with her of his own accord, not because someone had told him to, but rather because he felt like it?

Of course, she could not exactly _voice_ all the questions clustering her mind-- no more so than he could answer. There were only so many words she was able to utter. He did not even a speech synthesizer to speak of. What was she thinking? She was what she was. EVE probes were supposed to need someone to talk to. She could only look up at BRL-A with anguished eyes that would mean absolutely nothing for him. What a waste of time it had all been. Was she really so fool to believe that a Reject would understand her?

Slowly, as if trying to sort out his thoughts, BRL-A opened and closed his canopy once. It was a kind of nod. _I know you're sad,_ said his red optic.

Probe Five stared at him with surprise. Too incredulous to see where she was going, she almost tumbled over a higher heap of trash.

******************

After leaving the Captain, BRIDGET had continued to fly. Onward and onward, driven not by purpose but by sheer frustration. She had pushed herself throughout the storm, flying steadily against the strong winds, and then she had soared even higher and watched as the dark clouds unrolled underneath her. Just how far she wanted to fly, BRIDGET did not know; all she knew was that she wanted to _keep flying._

But on the long run it had only exhausted her body and strained her wings. Maybe she could fly all the way to the stars, to the space that she had patrolled relentlessly for so long -- but what for? Without a directive to follow, the space was no more a home to her than this planet was. She could wear herself out and fly until she left everything behind, but even that would not put her inner turmoil to rest.

In the end, she had dived toward the ground, and for a moment she had thought how easy it would have been to disable her anti-gravs and just let that end it all. For what other possible future was there ahead of her other than feeling each and every day pass without a purpose? How long it would take before being useless became being dismantled? Perhaps a nosedive was the quickest way out of the shallow existence she was leading on this planet.

But when she had seen the ground draw closer and closer, BRIDGET had simply chickened out. She had propelled herself upward and glided to a stop, while the rain pelted down on her aerodynamic blue and white chassis.

She ought to return to her alleyway, she knew – but for some reason she just did not feel like it. Too many thoughts were clinging to her that could not quite sort out. Instead, she had directed herself toward the familiar shape of the starliner, and sought shelter under the curve of the hull. It was like stumbling on an old friend that you had not seen in ages. Like seeking comfort in the arms of a lover.

A curtain of water crashed all around her, as though she had been hiding in the cave scoured behind a waterfall. BRIDGET did not mind the noise much; she found it that it underlined the tempestuous trail of her thoughts rather nicely.

_I wish that we had dismantled it right after landing,_ the human woman had said. BRIDGET laughed scornfully. Would the next step have been her own dismantling? For she was no more of use than the Axiom or Auto, and just like them, not by her own deficiency but by the humans' choice.

_A wreck_, the Captain had said. BRIDGET felt her anger rise like venom at the thought of the wincing shrug of the shoulders that he had given her, when she had confronted him about his words. _Vile, hypocrite…_

She had been brought up short when something small and pearly white had darted at lightning speed past the Axiom hull, on the other side of the water curtain. It was not small enough to be one of those winged creatures that littered the skies of Earth, and to a closer zoom it had revealed itself a purple eyed EVE probe.

BRIDGET had instinctively withdrew further below the hull. She did not want to be seen; even the presence of another robot was insufferable to her, at the moment. The probe, however, had not paid the slightest attention to her surroundings, and neither had her three fellow units who had presently reached their sister.

From her hiding place, where she could see without being seen, BRIDGET had observed with diffidence. They seemed to enjoy being outdoors, and leapt in the rain like as many little dolphins. Now and then, their argentine giggles could be heard even through the crashing water.

_How can they be so – unperturbed?,_ BRIDGET thought with envy. Of course, they still had their directives alright. But now they were not scanning the ground for plant life as by their programming, and yet they were not in the slightest as appalled as she was by that inactivity. On the contrary, they seemed to cherish those hours stolen from their directives.

BRIDGET shook her head in disbelief. It made no sense.

She had watched them play for what seemed an eternity. And then, from the curtain of falling water, she had seen something else in the distance that made her eyes narrow.

Several other robots were arriving, together with – was it three? – humans. _How odd_, BRIDGET thought. Humans never ventured this close to the Axiom. They were perfectly oblivious to it – _unseeing, devil-may-care hypocrites all worked up around their new town, like as many ants in the anthill. _What could possibly take them there, and in such a weather too?

BRIDGET's frown deepened as she recognized the Captain among them. The mollified sound of her voice infuriated her just as it had during their last talk. She had never seen the other two men, but one of the robots, rolling alongside them, suddenly rang a bell in her head. _Ah, so it's him again – the resident hero. And she must be his partner_, she mused, seeing how he never left the hand of an EVE probe with sparkling blue eyes.

Only a few nights before she had watched them fly over her alleyway in their nightly dance. And only the morning before that, he had crashed against BRIDGET while she was staring at the Axiom, lost in her thoughts. She wondered if he would recall her at all.

BRIDGET would have normally not been surprised to see them about. But seeing them near the Axiom she had not expected, and once more she asked herself - _here? Why here?_

They were nearing the docking bay. The Captain and the younger man did most of the talking, while the red-haired fellow was remarkably silent. The rest of the company was made of all the ten EVE probes, three BRL-As, and the town's hero.

There was something odd – yes, definitely something odd in the air. Surely a posse of robots and humans did not show up all of sudden on the Axiom's doorsteps for no reasons.

The humans were not to know of her presence there, alright. She had no desire for another talk with that lenient Captain or with those men who, for all she knew, might feel just as strongly against the Axiom as that woman had. But one way or another, she _was_ going to see into this matter.

Frowning, BRIDGET silently floated closer.


	16. Chapter 16

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**Sorry for the long wait, guys! Actually chapter sixteen and seventeen were finished and posted on the WALL-E Forum last year of the second WALL-E Anniversary. However as I had to squeeze them among a timetable that included another Anniversary fiction, a 30-imageslong Advent Calendar, six full color pictures, a photo-party, plus a virtual cake, plus a webpage thingy, plus photos of my assorted WALL-E stuff in a little less than three months, I ended up finishing Chapter 17 in such a rush as to even forget my intended plans for its end. Then work piled up in the rest of the year and as a result I've only been able to fix Chapter 17 according to my original idea some weeks ago, just as I completed Chapters 18 and 19 (which I originally intended as one single chapter, but later had to split for length reasons). So now I can happily present you the remaining four chapters! One more left to go before the first (of three) part of Chart Your Own Course reaches its finale! With Chapter 18 and 19 the story moves on to a crucial point of events when the ball gets rolling and things really go nova; there's also some deep foreshadowing as to how Part 1 is going to end.**

**Chapter 16 and 17 follow the same trend of 14 and 15 in that they're very meaty, with lots of things happening to and among the characters. As FREDD-E pointed out before, things went on at a relatively leisurely pace until the tornado struck the Colony. But after everyone's fears, prejudices and bottled up feelings were unleashed, things degenerated like an avalanche to… you'll see.**

**Also, assorted Pixar homages. I've written these over so long a timespan that I've actually forgotten what homages I put in the story, so if you find one feel free to point it out in reviews! :)**

**°°°°° Chapter 16 °°°°°**

The stairwell was drenched, and the three humans treaded on it cautiously. As he watched them struggle not to lose their foothold, the Reject BRL-A could not help thinking that Probe Five would have slipped at least ten times already and slid down on her bottom, if she had also been walking. How fortunate that EVE probes could hover a good many spans _above_ the ground level.

When she had tumbled against that trash heap, he had shielded her from the ensuing avalanche only a moment before disaster. _An accident that might have happened to anyone, _he had told himself_._ But somehow he had got the feeling that such accidents were nothing out ordinary, for her.

On their way to the Axiom he had observed her curiously. She was both totally like her sisters and totally unlike them - scatter-brained, accident prone, and every bit as clumsy as they made them. _A clumsy EVE probe – who would have thought?_ BRL-A had always believed them to be just as many cookie-cutter clones of EVE, but Probe Five rather made him think of a timid young REM-E.

She was left behind all the time, he had noticed. Not because she couldn't keep up with her sisters - but rather because every once in a while, she would notice _something_ that caught her fancy. And when she did, she forgot everything else. Self-preservation, too. When she had circled around the wreck of an oiler which the settlers had turned into a greenhouse, BRL-A had rushed to shepherd her away from the thing's old crane magnet. And only a few minutes later he'd had to drag her off a gaping manhole, in which she would have obviously wanted to descend for investigating the water level.

Sometimes, when she got distracted, the strong gusts of rainy wind would push her back a long way, and BRL-A had to catch her in his canopy before she was swept too far. A few times he had even prevented her from bumping against a ramp, a scaffold or a jib. When they had reached the Axiom, she had tripped over a parapet before he could catch her, knocking two of her sisters over. Looking after her was _exactly_ like trying to look after a mercury droplet.

It surprised him that she had managed to stay clear of the Repair Ward for so long. Back in the old days, it was nearly inevitable that the slightest malfunctioning would land you there. How much time you spent in a cubicle, or if you were _ever_ going to come out of those glass doors again, pretty often depended on the glitch itself. Generally, the more advanced the unit was, the most challenging the diagnostic would be. It went without saying that most of the Rejects had lived in seclusion a great many years. But how that mercury droplet – Probe Five, who had all of her sisters looks and none of their dexterity, who was not the best flyer, who could not stay focused – never suffered lasting damages during her missions, or how the Autopilot had never found her to be defective, the Reject BRL-A could not tell. Perhaps she had just been very lucky.

With a hissing noise, the automated doors slid inward, and the Captain led the way in the deserted lounge. The EVE probes followed readily; only two of them stayed behind. One was EVE, who was taking WALL-E in her arms and seemed quite glad to postpone the moment in which she would cross the Axiom's treshold, twenty years after she had darted out of it. The other was Probe Five. She lingered on the doorway a minute or two after EVE had gone in, turning to cast a doubtful look at the three BRL-As who stood like sentinels in the thick rain.

Instinctively, her eyes had sought out the Reject's red and yellow repair boot. She would have wanted to say something; most of all, she would have wanted to say _thanks_. It just did not feel _right_ to leave like that, after the many times he had stood up for her.

EVE probes stood up for each other too – from them she'd have expected that. Generally, it made her feel even worse about her own clumsiness. But the Reject was not an EVE, and in those few miles he had stood by her even though he did not have any reason to do so. He could have ignored her, he ought to have ignored her – but ignored her he had not. _How strange_, she thought. _How totally, utterly illogical._

And yet… could she simply thank him as she would have done with any other robot? He was no ordinary robot. He was a Reject. Back on the Axiom, it would have been impossible to come across him, or any of his denizens of the Repair Ward - unless one also started malfunctioning. _True, Probe One seems to get along with his lot well,_ she reflected. _But I?_ Stars, she was faulty enough on her own! The last thing she needed was to hang about with defectives. What next - how long before she, too, was given a repair boot like his own?

The word made her wince. _Defective._

The repair boot was a tangible proof of his unhinged programming – that, and the canopy which would not stay shut. But if she did not look at the former and ignored the latter, he was not so terribly different from the other two BRL-As. He could have easily passed for one of them, except that he was kinder and that there was something like sympathy in his red optic whenever he looked at her. Maybe that's what being defective was all about. And if so… she could have honestly thought of much worse.

Awkwardly, she waved at him with her fin and turned to leave. And because she was not looking ahead of her, but at him, she did not see the door frame and hit her head against it.

BRL-A's eyescreen flickered. If he had had a decent eye display, he would have grimaced. _How typical of Probe Five,_ he thought, opening his umbrella with a mix of compassion and amused exasperation.

No one else had noticed. The rest of the group had already moved on. The other two BRL-As were frolicking in the rain and probably would not have cared, anyway. When he hovered up the stairwell, they turned to stare at him with mild surprise. _Where do you think you're going?_ He could see the question in their optics as clearly as if they had voiced it.

_With them. Someone must watch Five's back, before she gets herself damaged._

Unsurprisingly, their only answer were two identical blank stares. Ironic how his thinking and theirs could not have been less attuned – after all, they _did_ came from the very same production line. With a wincing shrug of his canopy, BRL-A disappeared in the Axiom. _Five! Hey, mercury droplet, wait for me!_

* * *

While her sisters swarmed after Ryan and Cale, EVE had scooped WALL-E up from the ground.

She was not looking at him. On their way to the docking area she had grown more and more taciturn, dreading that moment like the plague. Now the Axiom towered over them, and EVE felt that she needed to keep all her wits together if she did not want to break up when they would be swallowed in its depths. She did not have any strength left to look _up_.

But even without seeing her haunted eyes, WALL-E could tell that she was frightened, and that she would have liked to fly as far away from the grounded starliner as her anti-gravs could take her.

::_Eeeevah?_::

Fleetingly she glanced at him, blinked, and then averted her eyes once more. But she embraced him tighter, as if not wanting him to cross the ship's threshold anywhere but in her arms.

P_lease, don't leave me when we'll be in the Axiom,_ she was thinking desperately. _If I lost sight of you even for a minute… oh, darling, I can't bear -_

::_Di…rect…ive_:: he whispered against her eyescreen. _Eeeevah, but don't you see that it's_ me who _can't bear to be without you?_ It was almost as if he had read her mind.

In another moment, EVE would have chuckled; just when she thought that their devotion could not get any deeper, she was taken aback by the strength of her love for WALL-E – and of his for her. Not now, thought. _Now_ she stared at him, gaping in disbelief at the words that his eyes were telling her, the very same words that she had so fervently prayed to hear. _Neither the Axiom, nor anything in it or outside it,_ said his adoring eyes, _will ever make me leave you._

_Promise?,_ she wanted to ask.

_Of course I promise._ He bumped his optics against her head, with such tenderness that the smallest spark passed between them. And that little bit of comfort was enough – enough to give her the strength she needed to fly past the doorway, into the Axiom, holding WALL-E to her, for the second time in twenty years.

* * *

The first thing that struck McCrea was that the Axiom did not even look like the same ship anymore. He had expected to find it lifeless, of course – if the apathy that had once reigned therein could be called life. But he had not expected that it would be so dark, so silent and still.

Cale looked round him curiously. "So that's it, uh? Doesn't look at all like the few I recall of this old thing."

"A graveyard" drawled Ryan.

"Yes, a graveyard" nodded the Captain, his eyes travelling over the thick layer of dust that seemed to cover every surface. "I had forgotten how huge it was. We're directly below the Lido Deck, I think…"

"Quite a let-down for aunt Karen and old Thomas!" said Cale, and he laughed soundlessly. "I wonder what they'd say if they could see what has become of the boogey ship?" There was a hint of bitterness in his voice that did not go unnoticed. The Captain cleared his throat uneasily and turned to inspect the elevators so not to lead the angry young man on. Ryan raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. WALL-E glanced at Cale from over EVE's shoulder and shook his head sadly. _So much anger_, he thought.

"Power's off, so the lifts are out of business. Can't we reactivate them separately from all the rest?" McCrea was asking to Ryan.

The roboticist shook his head. "Through the emergency generator, maybe. But that would take too long. Plus the reprogramming of the regenerative food buffet, and the actual driving the pods to the shelters? By the time we're done, that tornado will have swept over the town big time."

"There ought to be stairs somewhere, d'you reckon?"

"Probably. Hoverchairs were the height of the day when the Axiom was created, but people did get off them. Now and then."

"I don't remember any staircase. Never paid attention to it, I guess, even if I had had it under my nose" muttered McCrea, almost to himself. "_Odd how we could live for so long in a place without knowing it at all_."

Cale looked up sharply. For the second time he seemed about to say something, but was cut off when the Captain continued:

"Well, my best bet is that they're behind some service door or other."

Cale's brow furrowed. "A service door? Why?"

"Marketing." McCrea smiled wryly. "Pretty much the only thing that Buy'n Large was good at. Why let some obsolete stairs get the spotlight? They wouldn't get used often, I guess, even in the old times. Most people would just take the panoramic lifts any time."

"Makes sense" nodded Ryan.

"Girls, I'll need you to make some light" said McCrea to the EVE probes.

They fired out their scanners readily; only EVE did so with absentminded abandon. While her sisters scattered across the lounge, she stayed close to the Captain as though his presence alone could keep the ship from closing its jaws over them. She clung to WALL-E with such despair, such fear, that McCrea wished he hadn't asked her to come along. _It's a lot more difficult for her than it is for me_, he thought.

"It'll be alright, EVE" he whispered.

::_Directive_:: she nodded, looking ahead of herself. But she had spoken with false ease, and the Captain just shook his head and let the subject fall, for what could he say?

Even he felt somewhat uneasy. Now that it was shut down like that, there _was_ something sinister about the place. It was as if the Axiom had been watching them with hostile eyes. McCrea felt that if he had turned around, he would have caught its hateful stare on his back.

But then he thought, _stare? _How foolish, the ship couldn't have been staring at him. It was not alive. The only living things in there were themselves – and… a dark thought caused his brows to come together. For a second, he was reminded of Auto.

_It can't be,_ thought Brian McCrea.

* * *

_Scan the walls,_ thought Probe Five with some annoyance. _That's all we're asked to do, scan the walls._

She didn't care about a stupid wall. Walls were so plain and _blah_ boring, with all the amazing things to scan the lounge for.

Before today, Probe Five had really only seen the Axiom from outside. She had never bothered to imagine what its interior might look like, and even if she had, she surely wouldn't have imagined anything like that. She couldn't believe that she had once actually _lived_ there.

If she had been the sole mistress of her time, she would have liked to float up to the ceiling and look down. Who knew just how tall the lounge was? She couldn't glimpse its ceiling, even if she tilted her head back all the way.

But she wasn't the sole mistress of her time. And orders were orders; she had to find a door. _Follow your directive,_ she tiredly chided herself, wishing that her directive wasn't so terribly uninteresting.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that the Reject had not lost sight of her in the darkness. He hadn't. Why did it feel so comforting to have him watch over her? _It's like he's my guardian angel,_ she thought, remembering what she had once overheard an old human woman say.

When their stares met, and his optic flickered in greeting, she averted her eyes quickly. And doing so she did not see the tipped-up hoverchair, and would have toppled over it if he had not been quicker and caught her with his canopy.

_Watch out, mercury droplet! _BRL-A did not know whether to laugh or to shake his head._ Don't you ever look ahead of yourself?_

Mortified, she trilled something that might have been an excuse. She couldn't even bring herself to look up and see the angry – or, even worse, condescending – expression of his optic. Because surely he _was_ mad, right?

Timidly she peeked at him. He did not seem angry. He was looking down at her with – what was that? Sympathy?

_Nah, it's alright, I get it that it's not your fault if you're clumsy. I was on to something when I nicknamed you mercury droplet, eh?_

::_Thanks_:: she warbled uncertainly. _You're not so bad – for a Reject._

_And you're not so bad for a little walking disaster area on anti-gravs._

If he had had a speech synthesizer, BRL-A would have chuckled. He had guessed what she was thinking as clearly as if she had voiced it, something that he could generally only do with his fellow Rejects. Now his thinking was attuned to that of an accident-prone EVE probe – what next?

He noticed that her LED eyes had switched to laughing crescents. Presently she caught hold of herself and tried to look very serious, as if ashamed to have displayed her emotions for the world to see. ::_Directive_:: she warbled, pointing at her scanner beam. _It was nice talking with you, but I've got work to do now. _She sounded almost apologetic. Part of her wished that he would stay; part of her insisted that she did not really have reasons to cling to a Reject like that, although he was the first Reject she had ever got to know in her life.

He made no attempt to leave, though. He stood by her side like a shadow, as she ran her scanner over wall after wall. Occasionally he would open and close his umbrella, but for the most part she could swear that he was looking at her, thinking… what? Sometimes she got the distinct impression that their thoughts ran on parallel tracks, but sometimes she wondered, _how could that be? I'm not a defective from the Repair Ward. We belong to different worlds. How can our thoughts be anything alike?_

Another wall, another disappointment. Probe Five didn't know what to do anymore; her movements grew more and more frantic. It wasn't the BRL-A presence or his stare that unsettled her, but rather the thought of making a fool of herself in front of him. Was she funny? She tried to avoid his optic as much as possible, and yet she could have sworn that he was chuckling to himself.

She shut down her scanner, lifted her eyes to him and smiled uneasily. _Look, this is just pointless. I'm sure that we won't find any door. If anyone's likely to find it, that's my sisters. I can _barely_ find the way back to my recharge station come the night. Can't we ask the Captain if he doesn't happen to have another directive… _

_Don't sell yourself short, mercury droplet_, he would have wanted to reply._ And may I suggest that you fire up that scanner of yours? It's too dark to see where you're go-No, not that way, Five‼ _

CLANG!

… _too late,_ he sighed, as a metallic noise and a surprised warble interrupted the flow of his thoughts.

He had seen that coming. One couldn't be around Probe Five without realizing that she was like a magnet to accidents. But he had not thought for a moment that it would happen so _soon_. While she fluttered around in the dark, she had ran straight into a wall that she couldn't see and bounced onto the floor. _Mercury droplet, are you okay?_

_Ouch… Drrreck, if it hurt!_, she groaned, trying to get up. She noticed that several of her sisters had turned to look, and hung her head in shame. Now more than ever she wished she was invisible. She didn't want to see the concern in her optics of the other probes, or in the binoculars of Probe One's waste-allocator. And even less she wanted to see _his_ optic looking solicitously at her. _He'll think I'm such a disaster – and how to blame him? I'm _really_ a disaster._

The Captain strode over to them, his eyes wide. "Everything alright here?"

She warbled her assent unhappily. ::_Directive_:: _Why I never do anything right?, _she wondered, not without some bitterness. _What's wrong with me?_ She could still sense BRL-A's presence, standing by her side, and once more she had the fleeting impression that he neither judged nor pitied her. In another moment, she might have been grateful.

"Way to scare me off, Five" complained McCrea. "I thought someone had - oh!" Just as he was leaning to a wall, a secret sliding door they had not seen swung inward with a grinding noise. McCrea staggered, and would have fallen for sure had the Reject BRL-A and Probe Five not instantly grabbed him. "What the hell…? Ryan, come over here and tell me how this thing's still working with power off!"

The roboticist made his way across the dark lounge, muttering a word of apology whenever he bumped against an EVE probe. He knelt to inspect the door's foothold, and after a minute Probe Five thought she had seen his shoulders twitch, as if he was laughing silently.

"So?" asked McCrea's voice.

"So this thing's got a weight-and-motion detector, and you set it off by leaning against it" said Ryan, in an half-amused and half-apologetic voice.

McCrea said nothing for what seemed like an eternity. Then he calmly asked Ryan if he thought he was being funny, and the roboticist replied that he had the right to remain silent, and everyone laughed except for BRL-A, who couldn't laugh even if he had wanted to, and Cale, who thought he had caught a movement with the corner of his eye and turned to cast an inquiring glance over his shoulder.

The door gave in a narrow corridor with rooms attached. Like the rest of the ship, it was dark. But when the EVE ships ventured ahead, running their scanners in all directions, the corridor itself seemed to emanate a faint blue glow. And it was to the light of that glow that McCrea read a sign that said maintenance only.

"Good, at least this means there's got to be some stairs on the other side. C'mon, let's get going."

The robots wandered ahead, with Ryan's sloppy footfalls echoing in the corridor. But Cale seemed to have remained behind, noticed the Captain, shaking his head.

"Cale!" he called, as if to say, _how long do we have to wait for you?_

Reluctantly, Cale headed to the sliding door. On the threshold he turned and let his eyes sweep once more across the lounge. He wished that one of the probes had stayed - then he might have asked her to direct some light toward the glass-panel window.

Cale did not share his aunt's prejudices about the Axiom. Not at all. But he couldn't deny that he had felt he was being watched ever since they set foot aboard, and then he had looked up sharply and seen a sudden movement at the window. A movement so quick that he might as well have dreamed it, if he wasn't so absolutely certain that he had not.

_We're alone_, he told himself. _The Axiom's been sealed off all these years. There's no one else aboard, except for us._

"_Cale Hawkins_!" yelled McCrea across the corridor.

"Alright, alright!" he replied with a groan. He strolled after the others, but threw a last doubtful glance behind his back as he did so. It wasn't until he was perhaps halfway across the maintenance corridor, and no longer visible from the lounge, that he no longer felt those cold, unforgiving eyes were looking at him with hatred.

* * *

The humans had gone in. _Good_.

They had not seemed directive-driven as they wandered across the lounge, and there was something uncoordinated about their actions that made them look like Stewards who were experiencing difficulties. Also they had the tendency to move in group, just like Stewards.

They had not scattered, as might have been expected of them. After they had crossed the Axiom's bridge, it was as though an invisible strength had kept them together. Did they simply feel like they weren't welcome anymore – or was it rather guilt?

_Guilt for abandoning a ship that could have still carried out its duty, and done so well, like it was an obsolete piece of machinery._ The thought was so infuriating that it surprised even the robot observing them. It was infuriating because the negligence – the indifference – hadn't been deliberate. Quite simply, the Axiom had ceased to exist for the humans the very moment they had set foot down to Earth. And why should they have cared? They had their precious junkyard of a planet.

Did they even think about that past, while they treaded the polished floor? Did they think that the Axiom had seen to them, cared to them, watched after them for the entirety of their miserable lives? The lounge wasn't illuminated, and only their movements seemed to suggest that they had looked around. But with what expression they had done so, it was impossible to say.

What could be expected that wasn't the usual lack of interest, though? That realization of their carelessness would slap them across the face? _As if!_

Their presence aboard was disconcerting. That they did not mean to reactivate the Autopilot, BRIDGET could tell because in order to do so they'd have had to go straight to the generators and then to the Bridge, not scamper off into the maintenance area like a squad of BURN-Es.

_So they did not come all this way for him_, she thought, frowning. _But then what might they possibly want on the Axiom?_ It did not compute.

Confused, she hovered high above the lounge's windows, from where she could watch their moves without coming into their visual field. It had been close, though – when the young human had turned around and his shining eyes had pierced the darkness, BRIDGET's CPU had nearly overclocked, thinking that he might have noticed her. Luckily, he seemed to think that his optics must be malfunctioning, although she could tell from the way he had stood on the doorway that he was perturbed.

If she hadn't been so preoccupied figuring out what had taken them on the ship, his uneasiness would have cheered up a little. And it would have made her bitterly triumphant – a little. _Not so bold as when you walked past the entrance doors, are you not, human?_

During those twenty years, she had despised them quietly from afar. It wasn't until earlier, until she had heard the hateful words of the human woman and seen the hypocrite look on the Captain's face, that something in BRIDGET had flared up strongly and vehemently. She didn't know what to call it, she just knew that it was there in her programming, in her circuits, and it felt and burned like venom whenever she set her blue LED eyes on the shapes fumbling within the lounge.

_Something that made her wish to stand up against the injustice of it all._

Ever since the humans had walked in the Axiom, BRIDGET's troubleshooting subroutine had gone all red-alert. As if they represented a nuisance to the Axiom's chosen course, although now that it was _stranded_ and _forgotten_, it no longer had a course of its own. She would look at Cale, at Ryan, at McCrea, but it was _her_ that she heard. _I wish that we had dismantled it right after landing._

_We shall see,_ she thought, narrowing her eyes. _We shall see about _that_._

* * *

In Shelter Three, while the storm raged outside, and everyone waited for news of the group that had set off to the Axiom, a little child was sniffling quietly to himself.

Although Russell's sobs had calmed down, he still felt forlorn and miserable, and had dragged his weary toddler legs to the other side of the shelter, as far away from his mother as possible. He couldn't bear the thought of being near her right now.

She never left him do _anything_. He could sob and bawl until he turned purple in the face, but what for? He knew that when she said _no_ she actually did mean it. As far as he could look back on his life, it had always been _"no this"_ and _"no that"._

_Not like cousin Al, who was a grown-up and always had his way._

In the past, Russell had admired his cousin for the way he always put up with his games and encouraged him to play with robots. Now he would have only wanted to kick him. _Why it must always be him?,_ he thought, the anger boiling in his three-years-old's body again. You named _one_ funny thing, and it was sure ten-to-one that Cale had done it. He had gone camping with his friends, he had a hoverbike to cart his butt around, he hung around with all the coolest robots of New Chicago. He was a better swimmer, a faster runner, he could eat what he wanted and wear what he wanted. Whenever people asked Russell what he wanted to become when he grew up, he used to answer _"cousin Al",_ as if to say, _I want to be just like my cousin._

_Well, I've changed my mind. I don't want to be like that big meanie anymore! Grown-ups are nasty and unfair! _

Scowling, he let his eyes wander for the shelter. He was mad with the entire world, even with the robots, for no other reason than because they weren't the "Fwyte botties" that he would have wanted so badly to be with. His mother, he noticed, had fallen to sleep, although Russell remembered that she had slept for some time already before the Captain's announcement. _I'm upset, and she sleeps!,_ he thought unhappily. Mary stood at her side, and Mary was his mother's friend.

Suddenly, a flash of pure spite passed in the kid's brown eyes.

_I could kick her, though,_ he pondered. _Or pull her hair._ After all, she hadn't stood up for him when his mother had been mean. So she couldn't complain if he now played some prank on her for retaliation… could she?

And then, suddenly, a woman next to Russell moved, interrupting the flow of his thoughts. She was in her late fifties, with a long face and hair like ash. She came up flush to an emergency door and stuck her head out, then closed the door again. "Brrr! Filthy weather!" she said through her teeth, turning to leave. "Wouldn't be one bit surprised if we got hail on top of rain."

She paid no attention to the toddler, but Russell had looked up at her with interest. Most importantly, he had seen her open the door and then shut it, leaving it slightly ajar.

Quickly he ran his eyes around. Had anyone noticed that the woman hadn't closed the door perfectly? Everyone seemed to be talking in animated tones about the evacuation. The man named Thomas had got to the head of a small crowd who seemed to be agreeing with him a lot. Mary, next to Karen, watched them with a concerned expression and shook her head every now and then.

None of the robots were sufficiently close to see him, or seemed to be looking his way.

The cogs and wheels in Russell's brain were working fervently. He knew that he had to be quick; soon or later, someone would eventually realize that the door wasn't sealed. And Russell never got to elude his mother's surveillance for long.

Crawling on all fours so as not to draw attention upon himself, he reached the door, pushed it slightly aside and sneaked out. The rain swept him like a tidal wave, but he actually liked playing in the rain. He made sure to put the door ajar just like he had found it, then scampered off happily into the tempest, and the roar of thunder covered the sound of his triumphant giggles.

_I don't care what mama says,_ he decided as he stumbled, got up to his feet again and wiped the mud off his eyes. _I'm going to the Acciom, too._


	17. Chapter 17

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**°°°°° Chapter 17 °°°°°**

A good quarter of a hour after they had reached the Axiom's recreational area, Ryan was still bent over the regenerative food buffet. He circled around it, checked the wiring, moved his lips soundlessly and sometimes shook his head like a wild horse, but because his long red hair had spilled over his face, McCrea and Cale couldn't see with what expression he did so. They stood silently with their backs against the wall, waiting for his verdict.

At length he looked up. "It'll take a while to reconnect" he said. "But it'll do."

"Alright, then we're transporting it right away in one of the pods" nodded McCrea. "What about the reset? Can you see to it, Ryan?"

The roboticist shrugged. "I can't do it _here_. It's a simple operation, but I need to activate the machine before I caliber…"

"Ryan, I don't care about the tech aspects! Just tell me plainly, _can_ that thing be reprogrammed to produce normal food or not?"

"Yeah, no problems about that."

_Good_. At least he'd not have had to deal with another horde of infuriated citizens like Karen and Thomas. "How long will it take to get it up and running?"

"Difficult to say. A hour, maybe two." Ryan made a vague gesture with his hand. "Cale, I'll need your help detaching the synthesizer from the main bulk."

Cale was instantly at his side, eyeing the regenerative food buffet. "On it. Where do we begin from?"

They worked quietly for some minutes. The Captain had not offered to help them, which Cale found surprising, nor had he asked any other question, which was even more surprising. He watched them like a man who doesn't see what's in front of him, lost in his thoughts.

"Alright, when you're finished take the synthesizer to the escape pods bay" he said unexpectedly. "I'll catch up with you and the EVE probes there."

Cale looked up. Even Ryan, who was generally known for keeping his thoughts to himself, raised a slender eyebrow.

"You're not coming with us, sir?"

"Not right now. I have certain – things to see to here on the Axiom" replied McCrea. He seemed strangely reluctant, yet at one time compelled to follow the impulse that had overcome him. For a moment, he made Cale think of a man standing on the edge of a precipice looking down.

"Alright then" said Ryan with a quick nod, before Cale had the chance to interject. "See you later."

The Captain returned the nod, hesitated a moment longer and walked off. From where they stood they could watch him let the recreational area behind himself and cross the Lido Deck.

"What's the matter with him?" asked Cale, once McCrea was no longer within hearing range.

"Nerves" Ryan shrugged, turning to the cable that he was carefully disconnecting. "Can't blame him. This place would give anyone the creeps."

Cale looked at him sharply. "Don't tell me you believe in those stupid prejudices of my aunt and that Thomas fellow? Look, it wasn't the Axiom that started all our problems! Those begun well before its time, and it wasn't the ship that kept us trapped but …"

"… but our own mentality, yeah" nodded Ryan, unperturbed.

"And you think I'm making excuses, don't you?" asked Cale challengingly. It was as though all the bottled up raged had now escalated beyond his control; he could feel it rising like bile, could feel his blood boiling. "That I'm – how did she put it? – too young to remember what it di-"

"Not quite. I think you're making a big fuss over nothing."

That left Cale interdicted for a minute or two. Then he hissed: "So to you it's _nothing_ the way they're making the Axiom a scapegoat?"

"Nah, simpler still" assured the roboticist. He was so completely uninterested, that for a moment Cale wondered whether he might not be doing it on purpose just to get on his nerves. He did not even look up, too busy unscrewing a bolt. "See, I agree with you about the Axiom, in general. But it wasn't my point when I said that it gives the creeps."

"And then what did you mean?" Cale raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You're afraid of the dark or something?"

"It's not the dark. Think…" there was a pause, then a muttered curse, as the bolt slipped off Ryan's deft hands and rolled underneath a piece of machinery. "Think of the Axiom as one great battlefield. The Captain's been in it all along, been in it 'til his neck too – and so have EVE and WALL-E. I dare say she's taking it even worse than the others. Well, anyway – now that they've returned to that same battlefield after so long, how d'you expect that they feel?"

It was the longest speech that Cale had ever heard Ryan make. But though his anger had not ebbed yet, he thought he could glimpse where the man was going. "So do you think…"

"It's guilt, alright" replied Ryan. "Guilt of the survivor, they call it."

"Why of the survivor?" Cale frowned. "I thought there hadn't been causalities in the battle of the Axiom. I mean, aside from WALL-E" he hurried quickly.

The glance that Ryan threw him was almost pitiful. Almost. He wanted to say that Cale's direct experience with the battle of the Axiom wasn't sufficient to grasp what it meant to _be_ in the same places where you had once fought, fought for your life, and that even _he_ couldn't see the memories of those dramatic moments flash before his eyes the same way EVE, WALL-E and McCrea did. But then he decided against it. Cale was too caught up with his own troubles, with the angst of coming to an age. _And how to blame him? We've had it much easier when we were their age,_ thought Ryan with a shrug. _He'll understand on his own – in due time._

* * *

_How many pods are there left?,_ Probe Five would have wanted to ask.

She watched as Probe Seven escorted her batch at the entrance, surveyed its parking and then flew over it in triumph. _Watched_, she felt it should have been, with happiness for her sister, not resentment. But all the same she couldn't help being just the tiniest bit jealous.

Her scowl did not go unnoticed. Probe Seven, identical to her but for the deep violet eyes, came to a halt and floated closer.

_It's not really that exciting, Five,_ said her gentle eyes. ::Directive:: she added, shaking her head. _It's just programming work, routine… nothing special._

Probe Five sighed miserably._ I know, I know. It's just that… you're so lucky to have something to do that isn't being on stupid patrol._

She noticed that the Reject BRL-A was looking at her. Didn't he have anything better to do than look at her all the time? Although she wasn't very good at telling apart the emotions of a single red optic, there was something amused in his stare. _And what are you laughing at?_

_What, don't tell me that you'd rather get yourself damaged than stay in safety?_ She was the funniest thing.

_Oh, shut it!,_ Probe Five wanted to groan. _I know that I'm clumsy! But there's still things that I can do right!_

_Such as?_

_I don't know! _Exasperated, she flung her head about. _Something!_

_Maybe you shouldn't start with programming life-pods,_ the Reject teased with his optic.

_Oh, go to android hell!_, she scoffed. Earlier she had tried to program a pod, feeling more confident than she had in a long time. _I'm able to program one of those things_, she had told herself. _What could go wrong?_ But instead of following the coordinates that she typed, the little sucker had started trashing across the bay, completely out of control, and as if that wasn't enough, in her desperate attempt to stop it she had also activated the self-destruction module. It had taken the combined efforts of Probe One, Probe Ten and Probe Three to regain control of the lifepod, and after a quick consultation they had asked her to keep guard outside, so maybe the Reject was right. Probe Five, however, didn't really want him to be right this time. She didn't want to be reminded that she was a disaster, that she couldn't fly straight, that she ran into things like a mercury droplet.

The two other BRL-As watched at some distance. They made her wish even more that she was invisible. To the Reject – her guardian angel – she had grown used, because he had a way of watching her that did not make her feel awkward, and because she sometimes had the fleeting impression that he understood her like nobody else.

But _they_ had observed her with curiosity ever since she had floated out of the Axiom, and she knew perfectly well what they must be thinking. _Why she's not inside with the others?_

::_Directive?_:: repeated Probe Seven helpfully. _Can't you look around for plants, while you wait? _

_Yes, because I'm likely to find one! Let's be realistic-_

She was still sulking when another batch of pods flew outside, this time escorted by EVE. She greeted Probe Five and Seven with a nod; both her arms were wrapped tightly around WALL-E.

::_Yo-hoo!_:: waved the waste-allocator.

The Repair Ward BRL-A opened and closed his umbrella cheerfully, as if he had not seen WALL-E in ages. Half a second later they were all completely doused and laughing.

Probe Five smacked his pole playfully. _Look what you do, silly Reject!_

_You don't get it. He's our hero, mercury droplet! Our living legend!_ BRL-A's optic was flickering faster and faster. And faster. It nearly made her dizzy to watch, so she turned to EVE instead. _He's nuts!,_ she chuckled, the expression in her eyes almost affectionate.

EVE giggled._ Yeah, well, you're telling me!_

WALL-E, too, bobbed his head up and down, with a little droning sound that sounded like he was laughing. Probe Five glanced at him fleetingly, but not fleetingly enough. For an instant his optics and her yellow LED eyes locked, before she hurried to drop her gaze in shame.

She was terrified at the thought of looking him in the eyes, terrified of what she might feel. Because when she was around the waste-allocator, she never _knew_ what to feel. He threw her in such a state of confusion that she didn't know what to do or what to say, either.

_He's Probe One's directive, _she repeated to herself, as she did every time her eyes accidentally met his own. _Her directive._ But another voice in her mind wondered, as it did every time her eyes accidentally met his own.

_What would have happened if he had run into Probe Two first? Or Probe Seven? Or Probe Ten? Or me? He could have fallen for one of us as badly as he fell for her? And we – could we have fallen for _him_?_ She did not like where this reasoning was leading her. She didn't want to think that in another world, it might have been one of them holding WALL-E now. That he might have liked _them_ better.

Sometimes when she was sure that they were not looking her way, she glanced at him and Probe One with the corner of her eyes. And she told herself that it couldn't be, that he could have never loved another so much, because it only made sense for him and Probe One to be together.

But the voice in her head still wondered. _It could have happened to any of us._

For all these reasons Probe Five couldn't bring herself to look him in the eyes. She was afraid she would glance at WALL-E and _feel_ something. And even when she inadvertently looked at him, when her fins brushed against him by mistake, when he greeted her and she felt _nothing_, still the niggling fear of _what might happen next time_ kept eating at her.

It was impossible to be in the same room with him, to exchange a word or two with him as she did with the other robots. If she had found out that she liked him more than she ought to, it would have destroyed her – and Probe One too. That was where Probe Five drew the line. She couldn't care less about herself. But she would have _never_ broken her sister's heart.

The Reject BRL-A was looking at her. _Again._

_Look, our hero doesn't bite, _said his optic. _Don't be rude, say 'hi'!_

_I can't_, she would have wanted to answer. _Not until I no longer run the risk of having some feelings for him. Not until I find…_ but what was she thinking? _Find_ herself someone? As if she was ever likely to! Nobody in their right mind could take an interest in an EVE probe who was so terribly below-par.

It was then that a movement from above caught her attention.

At first she thought that it was a bird, or perhaps a bat, although it was far too large to be a bat. But then the creature glided smoothly down to a halt in front of them, and Probe Five realized that it was an unknown robot with long wings and strange tubular arms, neck and midsection.

EVE and her sisters gaped openly at the alien female. Her chassis was a pale blue with white markings, and where her chest should have been, she had a secondary black screen. Presently it was deactivated. She looked at them with black-rimmed LED eyes, hers a darker shade of blue. Probe Five tried to recall if she had ever come across her in the last twenty years, and decided that she hadn't. Her sisters seemed equally dumbstruck, so she took it for granted that they had never seen her too. She wondered where the stranger might have come from and what she was doing near the Axiom in the middle of a storm. There was something deeply unsettling about her sudden appearance…

And then, with a flinch, she realized that it wasn't about her but about the Reject BRL-A, who writhed angrily at Probe Five's side. Strange; _anger_ wasn't a feeling that she'd have ever thought of associating with him. _Do you know each other?, _she would have wanted to ask.

_Today it's the second time I see her. And frankly I'm beyond fed up with that. What does she want?_, he thought.

He wasn't the only one acquainted with her, she noticed. WALL-E was waving his hand, and EVE looked at him curiously. _How do you know her?_

_I don't. I ran into her some days ago._

But the tall robot did not return his greeting, although her eyes flared imperceptibly – in recognition. She did not speak, she did not nod, and surely she did not blink. For a moment, EVE felt as though she was standing once more in front of a taller, blue-eyed female version of Auto. If she had had a mouth, it would have long turned dry.

::_Naaame?_:: she finally asked.

::_BRIDGET_:: The other's reply was as non-committal as they came. Sharp like a gun blast. But then, out of the blue, she inquired: ::_Do you miss your directive?_::

The question came as such a surprise that EVE almost doubted she had heard it right. She glanced quizzically at Probe Seven, and Probe Seven shrugged as if to say, _'I'll be damned if I know'_. Probe Five did not say anything, wondering why BRIDGET's eyes never fell on the Reject and why he disliked her so much. WALL-E blinked.

::_Directive_:: answered EVE, pointing to the pods they had just parked.

BRIDGET shook her head impatiently. ::_Negative. I am referring to your original directive of Extraterrestral Vegetation Evaluator._:: There was a pause in which she stared down at EVE with fierce intensity. ::_You never yearn for that, do you?_:: she asked, like someone who already knows the answer to her question.

_No, why should I? And I'm still carrying out my directive!,_ EVE wanted to protest. _I help the humans growing plants._ She nodded toward the rain swept fields in the distance and repeated: ::Directive!:: Then she held WALL-E tighter to her. ::_Waaalle_:: _I have the love of my life, I have my work. What else do I need?_

BRIDGET looked from her to the waste allocator, and WALL-E flinched as he realized she was watching him. There was something different from the first and last time he had seen her, _something_ that he couldn't fathom. Maybe it was the way she carried herself, or a ferocity in her gaze that she hadn't had there. All he knew was that something had changed.

::_How fortunate you EVE probes are_:: she said at length. Probe Five thought that her words sounded almost bitter. ::_You got recycled, and tricked yourself to think that it is the same. The humans tell you scan this, and you comply. They let defective on the loose, and you take them in with your own._::

Opening and closing his canopy like a fury, BRL-A went for her._ I'll give you defective, you little…_

But Probe Five rushed to grab his pole and hold him back. _No, don't, please!_

_You stay out of this, mercury droplet!_, he raged, trying to get past her and at BRIDGET, who had turned to watch their struggle with an expression of distaste.

_Don't you see that she's just trying to goad you?,_ she pleaded with her eyes. _It's not worth it!_

_At least it's gonna make me feel better!_

Probe Seven flew to help her sister. But before EVE could say what she was thinking – which was a big fat "shut up" at BRIDGET's address – the latter spoke again. Her stare had drifted from the fighting couple to the Axiom, and for the first time she blinked. ::_They tell you to stray from your intended course, and you steer. The humans_:: she laughed bitterly. ::_What do the humans know about charting courses? Or about steering?_::

EVE's eyes narrowed. She wasn't going to let this weird robot get away with the last word. ::_Earth!_:: she said challengingly. _What need is there for charting courses or steering? The Axiom has landed. This is our home, now!_

She had touched a sore circuit. BRIDGET spun upon her so quickly that WALL-E instinctively cubed up, and EVE all but deployed her gun – just in case. Like a primed steel trap, the reconnaissance bot glared at her with something at a time desperate and wild in her eyes. But when she spoke, her voice was once more impassive, if not slightly jaded. ::_I do not envy you_:: she said.

_And what's that supposed to m-_

Just then, out of the Axiom's doors came Ryan and the other probes, with one last batch of lifepods in tow. They stood for a minute on the threshold, looking in disbelief at the scene before them. On one side, Probe Seven and Probe Five were trying to calm down BRL-A, who continued to flung his canopy open in a rage. On the other, WALL-E's eyes barely emerged from his cube as EVE and BRIDGET squared off.

_What's going on, here?,_ thought Probe Ten, shaking her head.

Ryan looked at BRIDGET, raising an eyebrow. "A reconnaissance unit" he said, more to herself than to her. "Yes, the Axiom had one, the records said. But I thought she had been dismantled."

Slowly, BRIDGET's eyes trailed from EVE to the man. WALL-E did not know what was scarier – if the outburst when EVE had mentioned Earth, or this gelid calm. ::_Dismantled_:: she echoed. ::_For what reason?_::

That seemed to catch even the roboticist off surprise. "I've never seen you, prior to this" he said. "I assumed…"

::_Your assumption was erratic_:: BRIDGET cut him off sharply. Then she turned back to glance at the Axiom, as if she had not seen it in a long time and wanted to keep a good memory file of it. ::Things _do not get dismantled just because people do not see them_.::

"Well, what was I was supposed to think?"

Her LED eyes flickered with amusement, bitterness and something else that was almost painful to watch. ::_The wrong thing, of course. When have human calculations _ever_ been accurate? You do not have a very good computing power_:: she replied. ::That _is why you _need_ us._::

And before Ryan could answer – before the EVE probes could warble her vehement disagreement, before BRL-A could go for her, and before WALL-E could look at her with unspeakably sad eyes – BRIDGET had folded out her wings and thrust herself in the sky. For a moment she hovered like a spectre against the gloomful, rolling storm clouds.

There was a great CRASH of thunder. A flash of lightning illuminated the docks as if it was morning, and when the light returned to normal, BRIDGET was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

_Was it really twenty years ago that I last set foot here?, _wondered the Captain. His eyes traveled from the elevator to the baluster, to the consoles that had once displayed a wide array of buttons and thinking lights. He indulged fondly on the hoverchair trampled on the ground, as though it was a long lost friend that he had not seen in ages. _Oh, hey, there you are!_

In the dark McCrea could only make out the outline of things, but he was so familiar with the place that it might as well have been lit up. He remembered everything as clearly as if had left the Bridge only yesterday. Odd. How could he remember, and yet feel like he hadn't been here since an eternity or two? _Only twenty years?,_ he wanted to ask. _Really?_

The windows spaced on the storm outside, but McCrea couldn't bring himself to look out, because in front of the window was the one thing that he was less prepared to see again. He lowered his eyes, fidgeting with the buttons of his jacket. Smirking, he remembered that there had been a time when he couldn't even button the thing up, while now it was perhaps a bit stretched over his prominent stomach, but buttoned up all the same.

He was buying time, he knew. But the truth was, he couldn't bring himself to glance at the deactivated steering wheel. _Not yet,_ he kept telling himself. _Not yet._ Although he had come to the Bridge for no other reason than to see Auto, he wasn't ready to look up _yet_.

"_You're not getting away from me, one-eye!" he had growled, holding onto the faceplate for dear life while Auto trashed around the bridge, like a wild bull._

_::__**Let go**__:: the Autopilot sternly said. _

_He swung, bucked and tried to slam the Captain down against the control panel, but McCrea had unsuspecting strength in his chubby arms._

"_Ooof – that's all you got?" taunted McCrea. His face was so close to the Autopilot's optic that he could see the resentment in Auto's stare. It was hard to say who was more disappointed in the other, if the Captain or the steering wheel. But then something else had flickered in Auto's optic, something so surprising that it had left McCrea astonished, giving his opponent a momentary advantage. If he had not known better, he would have said that Auto was not only resentful, but displeased over having to fight his Captain. For a moment, he thought he had caught a silent apology in the Autopilot's single red eye. As if Auto had meant to say, _I am sorry, Captain. I wish we had not come to this. But you leave me no other choice.

You don't know how sorry _I_ am too, Auto,_ McCrea had thought quietly. And it was then, while he struggled to overcome the Autopilot, that he had understood why Auto was not going to heed and obey. And why he, McCrea, was going to fight him to the last. Auto had put it best earlier on, in McCrea's quarters; they were both following their directives. Ironically, their directives coincided, as they both wanted to keep the Axiom's passenger safe, but their means did not, as McCrea wanted to let them fly free and Auto wanted to keep them in a gilded cage. True freedom against the gilded cage – it was always the same age-long feud…_

"Captain, sir?" asked a voice behind him.

Startled, McCrea spun around. "_Cale!_ Damn it, you nearly gave me an heart attack! Why aren't you with Ryan and the probes?"

"I hoped to have a word with you, sir" said Cale, and the Captain remembered how he had thought before that the young man wanted to say something, but eventually decided not to.

"You mean I'm going to find out what it is that you've been mulling over all the way to the Axiom?"He could guess, more than see, Cale's astonished expression. He smiled wryly. "Look here, Cale, I won't be the brightest bulb of New Chicago, but I can see when people are worried by something. C'mon, spit it out. What's the matter?

For a minute or two, Cale did not answer, as if trying to sort out his thoughts. Awkwardly, he passed a hand through his bowl-cut blonde hair. "You'll probably think it's not a business of mine, sir, but I'd be interested to know all the same. What's _your_ take on the Axiom?"

McCrea blinked. "Unusual question. Do you mean, if I hate it like your aunt does?"

"You don't." It was not a question.

"No", replied the Captain, shaking his head. "No, I don't hate the Axiom. Cale, I've lived those events first hand. I know better than to blame a ship for what we had done to ourselves."

"Yes!" Cale exclaimed, as if he had said the magic word. "That's it, exactly. Sometimes I feel – I don't know, like everyone wants to unburden our responsibilities over what happened, and the Axiom just happens to be the closest scapegoat they can think of. Like they hate it not because it's done them any harm, but just in order not to hate themselves." His dark eyes flashed adamantly as he spoke. By the end, he was out of breath. "Do you understand?"

McCrea nodded. "I do. But you're wrong to think that _everyone_ feels that way toward the Axiom. Most of them don't even care about making it a scapegoat, when it's so much easier to forget that it even exists."

"Yes, of course" said Cale, scowling. "With them it's always either disapproval or indifference. Once they set their mind on something, there's no talking them out of it." _Why did he think that he wasn't speaking of the Axiom anymore?_

"Prejudices have roots that deep. But… Cale, mind if I give you a friendly advice?"

"Sure, go on", replied the boy with a shrug.

"Don't be too harsh on your aunt. Karen is…" he looked for the right word, "… a very frightened woman."

Cale snorted. "That's not the way I'd put it."

"She and your uncle really believed in this world" said McCrea. "But after what happened to Ronald, she feels like the world betrayed her. She's terrified by it, and she fears that she might not resist the call of the gilded cage if she allowed herself – or Russell – to get too close to it. That's why she feels so strongly against the Axiom, why she hates it so."

Cale had lowered his head and tucked his hands in his pockets, frowning. He did not even seem to have heard, but suddenly he asked:

"Do you ever think that in emergencies like this storm, it might be a good idea to retreat in the Axiom?"

"It had – crossed my mind, yes."

The Captain said so almost guiltily, and Cale couldn't refrain from smiling.

"Ah well, good thing that you didn't suggest that, then" he chuckled. "Seriously though, why not? I bet that we'd make a better use of the ship today than we did back then, if only…"

"No hoverchairs?" asked McCrea with a smirk.

"That too. I mean, we don't have to _live_ in it! Can't it be _just_ a starliner, something that we use for travelling?" Cale paced back and forth animatedly. It stuck McCrea how much like Ronald he looked in the moment – as if his cousin had just returned from death to invest him with the same enthusiasm that he had in life. "Just think where it could take us!"

"Cale-" warned McCrea.

"What do we know about space, although we lived there for generations?" insisted Cale. "Next to nothing! We never looked beyond our holoscreens! Now we've the chance to see it for real, Captain, to see it all…"

"_Cale_" the Captain firmly repeated. "Don't count your robots before they are assembled! I said that I see your point, but it's going to snow in August the day the Axiom takes off again."

Cale looked positively crestfallen. He opened his mouth to speak, but all the words he thought of saying sounded so stupid and weak that he just shook his head and muttered: "Yeah. Yeah, sure." _What was I thinking?,_ he scowled. _The Captain's right, this is the way things are. No one's going to see the Axiom as anything but a trap. Maybe I should just give up telling them otherwise, for all it's worth._ "Well… I'd better go, Ryan will be wondering why I've not returned yet." He turned to leave, and his gaze fell on Auto's steering wheel, standing at the periphery of the bridge. As if stuck by a sudden thought, he asked: "What was the Autopilot like, before… you know…?"

The Bridge was shroud in the darkness, and therefore Cale could not see the Captain's face stiffen at those words. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he turned his head in the same direction that Cale was looking at.

He did not know what he had expected to feel – if regret, pity or a sense of liberation. But all he felt watching Auto's motionless shape was boundless sympathy. Sure, he could go back all he wanted to their confrontation of twenty years before – but prior to that, Auto had been more than an assistant, more than a mentor, more than a _friend_ for McCrea. He was the figure at which McCrea would have turned for aid, if he had been closed in a burning building. _Always, always in control._

"I've known Auto on-and-off for almost my entire life" he replied at length. "After I became a trainee, he was my only guide. He taught me all I know about leadership."

"Him?" asked Cale. "Not Captain O'Brien?"

McCrea couldn't hold back a chuckle. "When all was said and done, the Captains didn't really do much on the Axiom after the morning announcements. O'Brien was a good man, but he wouldn't have known where to start training his successor. No, it was Auto who was in charge of the trainees. O'Brien told me once that he had trained him too, and Captain Brace before his time."

"You and Auto got along well in the old times, didn't you?"

Pause. "In many ways I guess you could say that he was the father I never had. Sometimes he could be very irritating, of course, but…" he trailed off, and Cale picked up where he had left.

"But you miss him."

"Yes" replied the Captain, lowering his head. "I miss him. Many a times I've wished that he could assist me, when… well, at the beginning it wasn't easy to get used to the responsibility of leadership. I had to do everything on my own, and for me it was a first. Suddenly there was no more Auto to tell me _this is so and so_, to correct me before I made a mistake. You know one thing, Cale?"

The young man looked at him quizzically.

"It was in those earlier days," said McCrea, "that I realized we Captains had always counted too much on Auto. If we hadn't been so dependent on him, if he hadn't had to be in _charge_ of everything, perhaps now we wouldn't have come to _this_." He waved at the deactivated steering wheel.

"What do you mean, sir?" asked Cale, frowning. "I thought that A113…"

"No, I didn't speak of that. Auto had his directive to follow and would have stuck to it. But if he had had less power, if he hadn't been the Axiom's… facta factotum, perhaps it wouldn't have been necessary to deactivate him. Because there was only so much that he could have done." Even in the pitch darkness, Cale thought he had seen the glimmer of a tear in McCrea's eyes. "Now I only wish I could apologize to him. His present condition, the Axiom's condition… it's like my ancestors were responsible for both, and I with them."

At length, McCrea swallowed. Part of him would have wanted to move over to the steering wheel, pat it, tell something. Part of him knew that it was useless, because Auto was trapped in a nothingness from which he could not see or feel anything. "I suppose… things went as they had to do" he croaked, with a voice that he did not recognize at his own. He observed Auto for a few more seconds and then saluted respectfully. "He's been a good Autopilot, for the most part. _That's_ how I want to remember him."

"I'm sorry", whispered Cale, placing a hand on the Captain's shoulder.

"Yeah." What _was_ it with his voice? It seemed to have got struck in his throat. He looked away from Auto's steering wheel, threw a last circular glance to the Bridge, and then turned to leave. "C'mon, Cale. The others have probably finished with those escape pods, and I don't have anything left to do here. Let's go home."

Cale nodded and got in the elevator. The Captain, however, had fallen a few steps behind into pace. He was staring at the floor with a tormented look to his face – struggling, probably, to elude the grip of memories, not all of them happy or painful. For the first time, it struck Cale that to McCrea that brief visit to the Axiom must have been nothing short of returning to a house where one had lived for the greatest part of his life. "You're getting on?"

The Captain smiled wanly. "Ah, you know – just go ahead. I'll catch up in a minute. I want to say a last goodbye to this old place."

Cale flashed him an understanding look. "Of course, sir."

He pressed the descend button, and the elevator's doors closed between them. _Good lad_, thought McCrea gratefully. Many times Cale surprised him by sensing when it was wiser to ask questions and when to say nothing at all. He might still be struggling to find his way in the world, but he had found his head long before even his aunt found hers.

_Or before I found mine, _he thought, stealing a glance at Auto.

What was he hoping for anyway? To reactivate Auto just long enough to apologize, and then shut him down again? As if that would have made any difference to the steering wheel. But the truth was that after seeing him again after so many years, McCrea couldn't just put his heart to rest and walk off. He couldn't just leave him like that. His conscience was eating at him, and in his mind it had the same scorching eyes and sharp voice of that blue and white female robot.

But what else could he have done? Heaven knew if he had tried to reason with Auto, and look how well that had turned out. _Think what he did to WALL-E, to the ship… what he nearly did to you. _McCrea tried to persuade himself that he had turned Auto off because he had had to, because there had been no other way. When push had come to shove, he had turned him off just to defend his passengers.

That settled it, he sighed miserably. Auto was too dangerous, too unreasonable and too unstable to be ever reactivated. And he had defied McCrea's authority before. Who was he to say that it wouldn't happen again? He wasn't a roboticist like Ryan – and he had no doubt that Ryan would think he was out of his head to even suggest such a thing. An Autopilot wasn't programmed to feel regret or to think about _what may be_. Who even knew on what tangents directive A113 would take him next? No – McCrea might feel bad over what had happened twenty years before, but neither his willingness to forgive nor the pangs of his conscience would make him take such a chance.

Yet a sensible voice in the back of his head told him that Auto hadn't _always_ been unreasonable and out of control.

He gave a glance to the Auto/Manual switch.

No, that was out of the question. Auto had no use for his apology, and it would have been nothing short of a mockery to reactivate him for nothing. And as for reactivating him permanently –had there even been so much of a chance that Ryan or someone else might hack into his systems and terminate the process of directive A113 - McCrea dared not think about the bombshell it would be among the citizens of New Chicago.

Ultimately, he just had to come to terms with the fact that Auto had charted his own course. Just like him.

But still his thoughts lingered around the Auto/Manual switch, and how easy it would have been to flick it…

* * *

Cale walked down the drenched ramp to find the Ryan, the EVE probes and BRL-A rather out of whack. The probes were warbling to themselves with a confused look, BRL-A seethed, and even Ryan looked not half as unfazed as usual.

"'T's up, guys?" asked Cale, frowning.

The probes looked up at him and emitted warbles of greeting. But they seemed too much at a loss to come up with an answer, which only made his frown deepen.

::_Brrrr..._:: piped up WALL-E, still in EVE's arms. ::_Brrrriii…?_::

"Had a run-in with the Axiom's BRIDGET unit" drawled Ryan, at length.

Cale's frown deepened even more. "What's a BRIDGET unit?"

"Reconnaissance bot" replied the roboticist with a wincing shrug of his shoulders, as if to say, what is there not to understand? But for all he tried, Cale couldn't remember ever seeing a reconnaissance unit, nor having heard the name BRIDGET before today.

"Doesn't ring a bell. What…?"

But Ryan's only answer was another shrug, and the probes seemed no more able to explain why a strange robot unit might have upset the party so. Exasperated, Cale blew the air out through his lips irritably. "Ah, nevermind. I guess it's not important."

_So stern_, Probe Ten was meanwhile thinking. She shook her head in disbelief. BRIDGET's demeanor had been very different from that of GO-4, who knew that his voice mattered and wasn't afraid to throw his weight about when something was amiss in the Axiom. But there had been reproach in her eyes too when she had looked down on them – just of a different kind. More… distant. The kind of reproach that she would have expected from Auto, not GO-4.

The collective EVE network told her that her sisters were likely thinking along the same lines, too. But before any of them could say anything, the doors above opened again, and McCrea started heading down the ramp. Cale and Ryan looked up at once. EVE shifted WALL-E from one arm to another and saluted.

::_Caaapt'n_:: she warbled.

Usually, McCrea always stressed to the probes that they weren't to salute him all the time. Now, however, he paid it no attention.

"Alright, let's make it quick. The storm is getting worse." He spoke hastily, and Cale noticed that he continued to throw glances at the Axiom as if worried about something. His face was unusually dark.

Even Ryan seemed to notice it – because he raised an eyebrow. "Everything alright, sir?"

"Yes, yes" replied McCrea, with an impatient wave of his hand. "All the pods ready? Great. Let's get going."

It was the cue EVE and her sisters were waiting for. Obediently, they scattered again to get each batch of lifepods on the move. The BRL-As, who had remained at some distance from the rest of the group, floated closer and opened their canopies. Only the Reject did not leave Probe Five's side.

As they marched on, away from the Axiom's entrance, and under the torrential rains, Cale couldn't help turn one last time toward the grounded starliner. And for the second time that day he had the distinct impression that from the docks, the ship's recesses, or from the very windows, someone looked scornfully after them, with scathing eyes.


	18. Chapter 18

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**°°°°° Chapter 18 °°°°°**

It was almost as if the hostility they had perceived on the Axiom had followed them outside. The rain slapped their faces, and they had to advance with their backs hunched under the powerful gusts of wind.

Probe Five was no longer the only one who had a hard time flying straight. Each of her sisters had in turn been thrown back, not once, but several times; they wobbled, beeped in confusion, lagged behind and hurried after the others as fast as their anti-gravs would allow. When they had separated to shepherd off the lifepods, it had been reluctantly, as though none of them was tempted to brave the storm on their own.

EVE clung to WALL-E for dear life, as if their hands were wielded together, instead of clenched. The BRL-As stood like windmills, trying to fragment the blasts of icy rain and wind with all their strength – but they were clearly worn out. In moments like that it struck them just how the shallow existence that they had led on the Axiom, where it never rained and the sun did not rise, had not been - after all – _that_ shallow…

As for Five, she had simply given up altogether. What was the point in trying to fly in that weather when she couldn't even fly upright under normal circumstances? Hovering on her anti-gravs, she leaned against the widespread canopy of the Reject BRL-A. He had not seemed to mind dragging her onward like some sort of tugboat, for which she was grateful. If she could have found a way to thank him…

The canopy twitched slightly. A reassuring twitch – as if, by it, he had meant that she had nothing to thank him for.

But it was a twitch that also told her something else, something which she instinctively knew he wouldn't have wanted her to guess. Although he was doing a pretty good job hiding it, he was weary.

She withdrew a little. _Look, don't worry about me. I will manage…_

_Oh, shut up, mercury droplet, _BRL-A wanted to groan. _This wind would flip you upside down in three minutes. Ten minutes and we'd have to look for you back at the Axiom. Fifteen minutes…_

Five bristled up, which in another moment he would have found funny, if only all his energies hadn't been focused on staying afloat.

_I'm not _that_ clumsy!_ Her eyes narrowed in a disdainful glare.

_Aren't you? _

_No! I- _She could almost imagine his optic giving a weak flicker. It was one of the many things about the Reject that puzzled her most. Unlike her sisters, in those few hours they had spent together he had never tried to pretend that she wasn't clumsy; but somehow his acceptance that she _was_ managed to make light of it like nothing else. She wondered if all the Rejects felt like that about each other. Was that mute understanding the reason why they had been able to endure so many years in the reclusion of the Repair Ward without going haywire? The next moment she caught that thought almost before it was formulated, and reminded herself that if they had been sent in the Repair Ward to begin with, it was _indeed_ because they had went haywire. They were defectives.

She really should have stopped thinking of them with the same criteria that she applied to other, sound robots like her sisters and the rest of the Axiom bots and…

… _not me_, she quickly told herself, shuddering uncomfortably. She had never been quite like the others; now she felt closer to the Rejects than to the other probes. Maybe she really belonged in the Repair Ward, with BRL-A and his fellows. How could GO-4 have failed to see that? It was so obvious.

Dejectedly, she shook her head at the Reject by her side. _Leave it. You're right, I'm just a big disaster. Maybe I should be wearing a repair boot like yours._ She sadly wondered if the red and yellow device would suit her; could it prevent her from knocking out more people, flying into things and getting lost? He wore it with pride, like a medal. _How strange,_ she thought.

_The boot on its own is nothing, mercury droplet._ He gave a wincing shrug of his canopy, which made the repair boot sway in the rain. How had he guessed that she was thinking about it? Since when she had become that predictable? _It's all about whose robot carries it. _

While he shepherded Five alongside the others, the Reject's thoughts turned bitter as he remembered BRIDGET. He could still feel the way she had glanced disapprovingly at the boot on his head, as though it had been the mark of his inferiority. _Arrogant, struck-up little-_

Probe Five had looked up at him in askance. Although he wasn't making a sound, she knew instantly, without need for words, that he was irritated. _You're still upset about her?_

Thinking about BRIDGET and her contemptuous eyes, he would have wanted to vent by opening and closing his umbrella, just like he had done in the shelter. It would have made him feel better, but his own voice in his thoughts reminded him that he had to keep his umbrella wide open to net Five, whom the wind was constantly pushing back. It was only her occasional bump against the metal canopy, her white shape floating by his side, that stayed his anger.

_See, Five… mercury droplet. The thing about repair boots is that they don't make you inferior to anyone._ He stared hard at the ground, at the small streams flushing down the cracked asphalt. _It doesn't make a difference on who you are. It just tells you that you belong somewhere._

As she floated silently alongside him, Five found herself wishing for that selfsame certainty. She would have liked to stand boldly against the world, just like him; there was a casual determination about that lone umbrella-bot that not even sound robots had. The Rejects were never unhinged by their faulty programming, by the weird things they did. Chuckling inwardly, she told herself that if she had had an ounce of his courage, she would have never been afraid of looking the waste-allocator in the eyes again, she would never fuss over _what might happen_ again.

_What about me? Do _I_ belong somewhere?_

The Reject shrugged his umbrella for the second time, nodding in the direction they had just come from. Under the curtain of thick rain, the Axiom's blurred silhouette had something deeply unsettling to it, like a ghost wreck evoked from the mists. It strongly reminded Probe Five of BRIDGET, of the way she had hovered in that same rain and looked down on them with scorching contempt. As she gazed at the distant starship, Five wondered where the blue and white robot had flown off to and if they would ever see her again. But she felt that it was not what her guardian angel had meant by showing her the Axiom, and she looked up at him questioningly.

_Mercury droplet, what counts is not where you belong, but that you don't belong where _she_ does._

_Where, then?_, she wanted to ask, and barely refrained from chuckling._ With you and the other Repair Ward robots? I would fit there?_

His optic flickered. _You…_

"There!" McCrea'a panting voice cut them off. Shelter Three stood some thirty meters ahead, its glistening hull barely visible against the dark sky.

Cale's shoulders straightened at the sight, his mouth set in a thin line. But even though returning to the shelter would mean hearing more of his aunt and her prejudices, of Thomas and his insults, of John and his paternalistic ways, nonetheless he was relieved to be back. The return journey from the Axiom had been nothing short of a nightmare in that weather. Suddenly, the weather bulletins forecasting a tornado no longer seemed that preposterous…

_Almost as if the ship resented us for profaning it,_ _but in the meantime did not want us to leave._

Irritably, he wiped his soaked hair off his forehead. _What tripe! I must have gone crazy like my aunt – projecting thoughts onto a ship as if it was a sentient being!_ Trying to push those thoughts off his mind, he lowered his eyes on WALL-E and EVE, who advanced by his side. "So…" he asked breathlessly. "Everything alright, you two?"

WALL-E's binoculars moved up and down. EVE let out an exhausted warble, but nodded as well. Not once had their joined hands come off, and as the shelter drew nearer, they seemed to hold tighter on to each other, at a time giving and getting strength from the other's closeness. _Now that was love and a half,_ thought Cale, smiling to himself.

"I'll be glad when this is over" he murmured exhaustedly, patting the pole of the female BRL-A who followed in his tow.

With the underside of her umbrella she gently patted his head. _You're telling me, lad. I'm drenched down to the last bolt. I mean, this is totally unrealistic! I'm a BRL-A, and I'm drenched!_

By now the cool, artificial light of the entrance was trickling over their worn-out features. While EVE and Probe Five saw that the pods parked up in a neat row, McCrea marched past, talking quickly with Cale. "I'll be off to Shelter One, I want to make sure Ryan got there alright. You reckon…?"

He fell silent as John came up to them. The expression in his eyes was so uncharacteristically glum, so concerned, that McCrea stepped back. It had to be serious. Maybe Thomas or someone equally hot-headed had worked themselves up to a rage in their absence. _Please,_ he thought, _not another brawl. We don't have time for this._

"Thanks goodness you've arrived, Captain - we tried to ping you, but the signal's dead. We wanted to send out the Stewards, see if they could meet you halfway…"

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply, removing his hat. "Did someone…"

"Sir – we're not sure how it happened. Hell, I'm not even sure _when_ it happened, must have been a fraction of second, because no one has seen him…"

"No one's seen who? John, damn it all, tell me straight out what happened!"

Haunted blue eyes peeked at him from the lean, agonized face. John bit his lower lip, before answering at length: "It's little Russell, sir. We looked for him everywhere, but he didn't turn up. He's no longer in the shelter."

Captain McCrea dropped his hat. At his side, Cale swore under his breath.

* * *

Alone in the docks, long after the unwelcomed visitors had left, and while the sky turned three shades darker than gray, BRIDGET hovered restlessly around the Axiom like a lost soul, desperate to take action and yet at a time reluctant to do so.

She had no time to lose. If she was to achieve what she had set out to do, it'd have to be today or never. From the way the human woman and the red-haired man had talked, soon the Axiom would be eligible for dismantling, and Auto and herself with it – because the humans no longer saw them.

Already she could feel the bitterness building up in her circuits. She wanted to spit on the ground, if only she had been able to spit.

The humans did such unreasonable things. One day they woke, looked up from their holoscreens and decided to pack up and move away and take all their robots with them. They gave directives to the faulty ones, and had the others carry out the first available task because they did not know what to make of them. And they left their starship to rot in the garbage, like a piece of junk whose only purpose was to be eventually disposed of. They left it, wondering what it did wrong.

It was a kind of madness, she knew. The kind that wouldn't have been out of place behind the glass doors of a Repair Ward, perhaps. Never had she thought that there would come a day when Repair Ward leftovers would stroll among the normal people, or when the normal people would be almost as odd as the malfunctioning robots they liked to surround themselves with.

But if nothing changed, the Axiom would pay the toll of that madness. _A wreck_, the Captain had said. _Things got scrapped because humans no longer saw them_, the red-haired man had said. _Whose fault is that?,_ she wanted to reply. Things were under their nose the entire time, but it seemed humans never bothered to _see_. They hadn't looked up from their holoscreens for how long? Now they weren't looking up from their trash.

While the rain drenched her frosted blue chassis, BRIDGET flew over the disembarking ramp and in the entrance hatch. Only then she dared throw a quick look around.

It wasn't too late. If only Captain McCrea's huge bulk had stood next to her in the rain, if he had been there to take up his ship's defense instead of calling it a wreck, then BRIDGET might have reconsidered the scathing impression that she had of him. She might, even, have given humankind a chance.

But in the docking bays there was no sign of life, other than her. Why had she expected otherwise? The Captain was just like that human woman, just like the man with red hair.

With a dismissive shake of her head, BRIDGET reached out and pressed the door's control panel.

* * *

Hovering away from the lounge, she looked around at the empty corridors and immediately wished she hadn't. _Just keep going,_ she thought, averting her stare. _Don't lift your eyes._

BRIDGET could not bear it. She had gazed at the ship from afar for countless days. She had watched the Captain and his little band like a hawk in their errands through the Axiom. But to actually _be_ there herself – in all that obscurity, that stillness, that _dust_ – was nothing short of what a punch in a gut would have been to a human. There was such desolation, such _abandon_ in those silent halls, that BRIDGET felt as though the power core had been yanked out of her very chassis.

_Keep your eyes down. Keep moving._

Wherever she looked, something reminded her of a past when the ship had been alive, not withered and forsaken. Did the other robots remember all that? Did the humans?

Those EVE probes and the BRL-As seemed to have taken it in stride, she was sure. They hadn't been brought up short by the sight of an empty cup lid, nor had they winced passing by a hoverchair that had been kicked carelessly out of the way. Somewhere, out there in the rain, they still had a directive to return to. BRIDGET's eyes hardened as she left the people-mover's line behind her and began to glide towards the Info Station. _Keep moving_, she told herself.

What could they know of how it was like to be superfluous? The humiliation - the aching need? Funny… for so long she had tried to give a name to the restlessness that sometimes gripped her, to the sound and images and sensations that filled her mind when she tried to go in Sleep Mode. This morning she knew. She needed the Axiom as badly, as desperately, as she needed to power-up her fusion reactor in order to live. Perhaps the mistake had been hers. She shouldn't have moved out of the ship. She should have stayed behind with it, stuck with it and, had its time ever come – she should have gone down with it.

They called it an empty hull. Sometimes, when their eyes fell upon it, they called it a wreck. But in a couple years no one would call it nothing. All that would remain would be even more buildings and even more trees in the place where, once upon a time, the grounded starliner had stood.

_Like hell I will let it happen_.

What did the humans think? That just because they had lumped it as expendable, the ship was to go with a future not of its own picking? The choice was not theirs to make. They did not have the right. They did not even deserve it – not even their Captain! What had he ever done? Watched after the Axiom for what - a hyperjump and some hours? Auto had steered it from even before her time. If he had ordered that they went down with the ship, she wouldn't have thought twice of it, and that would have been right. She trusted the Autopilot, who had always been in charge and always knew what to do, _so keep moving, BRIDGET. Don 't see the deserted halls. Don't lift your eyes, keep them peeled on the dark floor guides. _Nothing could interfere with her duties, not even that seething resentment for the unfair way in which the humans had written them off. _Follow your directive._

She glided to the back of the scarcely used boardroom and down a short corridor. There, a flight of steps led to a dismal chamber that was almost completely occupied by the emergency reactor. Great iron pipes departed from the bulk of the structures. Higher up, a series of dusty hoses strewn in spider web connected the generator to the ceiling. It didn't look too badly off, thanks the stars.

Would it still work, though, after such a long time? Twenty years were hopefully too few to clog up a technology that had been meant to last for ages. But the emergency reactor had not been in use for way longer… since the times of Captain Thompson, if her memory files were to be trusted.

Like she had any choice. The main generators were off limits to the likes of her; only Auto and the Captain could fire those up. It was a risk all, loose all bargain. Nervously, BRIDGET hovered closer to the metal machine. _Please be working, _she thought before splitting her fingers and getting to work.

For a minute, maybe three, maybe ten, she fiddled with the levers and switches. Her fingers moved quickly over the controls, uncertainly at first, then with rising confidence. You did not have to be an EVE probe to know how to operate that.

Still, the sudden whoosh of the great machine caught her so off guard that she instinctively backed into the wall as the engines came to life with a groan. Lights flickered and went up – in the chamber, in the corridor that led up to it, and all over the starship.

"_Welcome on the Axiom"_ said the computer, her pleasant robotic voice bouncing off the walls.

It was like coming across a program that you had not operated in a really long time. For the first time since she had been assembled, it dawned on BRIDGET that the circuits of her LED eyes must be overloading. She blinked off the discomfort, with a feeling that resembled - but wasn't exactly – a sting.

_Maybe,_ she thought, _this was what the humans felt like, when they wept with happiness._

* * *

Crawling on all four, Russell had crossed the few drenched miles that separated him from the disembarking ramps in half the time it would have taken an adult to do so. He was very happy with himself; no one had been quicker than him, not even cousin Al.

Why the adults couldn't just crawl, anyway? It worked so much better than walking. The wind didn't push you back as much – and you could get anywhere faster than if you staggered on your feet like a dumb grown-up. As he glanced around, the toddler was relieved to see only rain-swept pontoons and empty docks. It hadn't occurred to him that his cousin and the others might have already left; the idea didn't even cross his brain. Cousin Al, the Captain and the botties would surely catch up soon. They were just taking their sweet time.

The ramps glistened treacherously under the streaming rain, but three-years-old Russell - who always went on the slide from the wrong side, over and over again, until he made it to the top – scaled the smooth, slimy surface with a gait so firm, it would have left many grown men reeling. By turn he would slide down on his bottom, shake his head and return to climbing. Many times he just tried to leap two steps at once. _Climb, climb, climb._

The rain had long jollied him out of his mood. So had the fact that soon, very soon, he would be seeing the Axiom. As he climbed higher and higher up the ramp, he even made peace, mentally, with his cousin. It was alright - cousin Al and the Captain would soon be there, and cousin Al always let him play with the botties. _Not like mama,_ thought the child. Deep at heart he knew that his mother meant well, so maybe she was right to be worried all the time, though Russell did not want her to be right. You couldn't play with her, you couldn't do anything around her. Maybe it was a good thing that his mama never got _anywhere_ near the ship.

Finally, he hauled himself over the last drenched step and looked up. And up. And up.

The entrance loomed over him like the gaping mouth of a cave. BRIDGET ought to have closed it, maybe even thought she had – but truly she had been far too preoccupied not to let her eyes wander, her _thoughts_ wander. If she had lost heart now, there might have never been another time. In her desperate haste to reach the emergency generator, BRIDGET had rushed across the Axiom just to escape. She had entirely forgotten about the door.

Babbling happily to himself, Russell stumbled into the cavernous metal hall. He couldn't even see the ceiling. It had never struck him before to wonder how big the "Acciom" was, but now he wondered. Bigger than the Colony? Bigger than the world? He took a wobbling step in the dark. Maybe that was it – maybe his mama didn't really like the dark. Maybe, if she had been there, he could have showed her that it was alright, and that she didn't have to be afraid because she was with _him_. Another step.

Presently something like a small buzz – like the faintest spark of energy – seemed to crackle in the air. _Botty?_, wondered the child.

He had just started to look around, when the shadows withdrew like frightened REM-Es, and the hall was bathed – no, _flooded_ – in a burst of bright, blinding light. Russell dropped on his bum, dark spots still in his eyes.

"Oooh…."

What had happened to the darkness? It was as though an invisible VAQ-M had whisked it away leaving patches of greens, blues, reds and oranges in its place. Which of those things were merry-go-rounds? Which were toys? A soft music, unlike any song that Russell's mother had ever sang to him, blended with the background hum. Huge holoscreens flashed in mid-air, displaying brighter-than-life pictures that nodded, blinked, smiled and talked.

Why his mama had never brought him there before? There was nothing dangerous about the Axiom! It was just a big lunapark. Russell had liked the ship when it was huge and dark and mysterious, but now he liked it even better.

"_Welcome to the Axiom"_, said a smiling, metallic female voice.

"Acciom!" Russell grinned gleefully. He decided at once, with childish sureness, that the voice was the ship's, and that the ship was happy to see him. Somehow, the voice reminded him of his mother when she wasn't upset all the time. Russell liked her better when she smiled, which she didn't do often. Now the ship was smiling, and had put on all its lights, bells and trinkets for no other reason than to make him happy.

Just ahead of him, Russell spotted a kiosk of transparent glass, and beyond the kiosk a doorway that gave in what seemed to be a small but comfortable living room. He saw colorful carpets and bright orange settees.

_Settees!_ The toddler beamed. Even from that distance they looked impossibly soft and comfy. And he _could_ use a nap, after all that crawling, walking and stumbling in the mud.

_Just for five minutes,_ he thought. _Until cousin Al, Cap'n and the botties get here._

He scampered past the kiosk and into the lounge, where he held out his arms and hauled himself over one of the orange divans. Its back was so high as to hide even the tip of the toddler's head. But, from there, Russell could look out – on to the lobby, on to the admission kiosk, and on to the lifts area beyond the small lounge - much better than anyone from the lifts could have looked _in_.


	19. Chapter 19

**°°° Chart Your Own Course °°°**

by Cri86

**And that's it for today, folks! I will post the remaining Chapter 20 - which concludes the first part of Chart Your Own Course - on Jun. 27th in celebration of WALL-E's Third Anniversary. Until then, may the course you chart always take you to bright stars!**

**°°°°° Chapter 19 °°°°°**

The elevator took speed as they rushed past the Maintenance Area. The hallways and corridors zoomed in a dark blur around BRIDGET, and for the moment she was happy with that. She didn't want to think that in a different time, in a different world, robots had been _working_ there.

Twenty years were _nothing_ to a robot, she knew. What could a mere 7 304.84398 days mean, when she had lived so long? Yet, to her, each and every of those days had seemed to last forever, and in the forsaken interiors of the Axiom it really seemed to have been not twenty, but twenty _thousand_ years ever since the ground lines had last been trafficked.

Already she could hear the distant jingle of the advertisements from the Passenger Area. Odd coincidence – remarkable – to hear it just then. It was as if the ship's computer had been thinking along the same lines and wanted, in some way or other, to reach out for her. As they emerged in the light of the Promenade Deck, she was able to make out scores upon scores of holoscreens flashing, blinking, blaring all at once. Tidbits of words carried out to BRIDGET through the glass wall of the lift.

"… _Large, everything you need…."_

"… _sky was never…"_

"… _is your superstore…"_

"… _final fun-tier!"_

"_Feel beautiful!"_

"_Your day is very important…"_

"… _our limit…"_

"… _Time for…"_

"… _all you need, and so much…"_

She laughed, shook her head. _Too many voices, computer! I'll never get what each holoscreen is trying to say in this mess._ But she felt, as the elevator continued to race upward, that the _meaning_ of the words wasn't nearly as important as the _words_ themselves, and that with all those words, the Axiom had really only wanted to tell her – _you are not alone._

Russell was still dozing in the settee when a movement in the distance caught his eye. He sat up straight, suddenly curious.

At the far end of the corridor, on the other side of the lounge, an elevator was moving - but it wasn't the elevator that interested him. Russell normally wouldn't have glanced twice at it, except that the elevator was occupied by a long-limbed robot female with blue and white markings. The toddler recognized her instantly.

"Boo botty!" he giggled, pointing. She didn't look up, so maybe she had not heard him. Yet Russell could only think of one reason why she would run away instead of coming out to play – because she wanted to be run _after_. He had already noticed that the "botties" seemed to like that game best. And for the same reason, he liked it best also.

If he was at all surprised at how she had got past him without his noticing, Russell did not show it. He did not wonder if she had been on the Axiom already when he had arrived. Did it matter? Perhaps. But playing with robots was _fun_. Russell wanted to play with the blue robot more than anything in the world. He did not care about things that could not even fully grasp.

Swiftly, he let himself slide down the divan onto the floor and scampered across the corridor on his little feet. He knew all about lifts because his mother had taken him on one before. They were round and transparent and had always reminded him of swings. Now he would get in all by himself, like a grown up.

His shoes slipped and squashed against the polished floor, leaving a trail of muddy prints. His mother didn't like mud. She didn't like anything fun. Russell thought that she really had to visit the ship sometimes, so she could see for herself that there was really nothing wrong with fun. Usually it was Karen who took him around, but this time he would take her by hand, like… like…what _was_ that funny thing everyone told him to be?... oh, yes, like the family's little man. Russell wasn't sure what a little man did, only that it supposedly made his mother happy. He decided that he would be the family's little man and show her all the fun things you could do on the ship. Playing with robots and getting in and out of lifts, especially.

"Iff!" he babbled, rushing into the first elevator he saw. He jumped up and down and added in a happy squeal: "Boo botty!"

Nothing happened. The elevator didn't even twitch.

Baffled, Russell looked up at the glass and metal structure looming around him. _How strange_, he thought. Why nothing had happened yet? The lift knew that he wanted to go after the blue robot. How could they _not_ be moving?

He impatiently tried again, even pointed to the ceiling, and once more was let down. He might as well have been speaking to the walls for how much the lift seemed to listen. Perhaps it had fallen asleep, even though Russell couldn't remember having ever thought that a lift needed sleep. Did the lifts also have mothers who put them to bed? Russell hated it. His mother seemed to think that he needed his naps at the wrong times entirely, when he would have much rather stayed up to play with the robots. And when she did, she listened to no reason. _Mothers were all the same_, he scowled, brooding over the injustice of it all. Unhappily, he dragged his feet a little and mumbled: "Boo botty."

What if the blue robot was actually waiting for him? Would she be sad if he didn't turn up? _Maybe, if I just sit here and wait, she will come to look for me,_ the child pondered. If the lift wasn't going to take him anywhere, perhaps she would. And she would tell the mother lift that the naps could wait.

_Lifts…_

Suddenly, a dim recollection hit him. When his mother had taken him on a lift, she had _never_ said where she wanted to go. The lift just seemed to know it – and for a while, when he was younger, he had wondered how that could be – until he had noticed that his mother was pushing some colored buttons on the wall upon entering. He remembered those buttons because they looked a lot like the portable video games that some bigger kids carried with them.

Russell's eyes glinted. There were several rows of buttons above his head, and one of them would take him to the blue robot, he knew…

Which one, though? He tried to see if any of the buttons had the picture of a robot on it, but he could only make out numbers and random letters. There weren't any of the words he knew either. That was by far the most difficult game he had ever played. How could the bigger kids like it so much?

_Perhaps,_ he reflected,_ he had to push the topmost button if he wanted to follow the blue robot, because she had gone up. _Russell wasn't sure if the button on top was also _the one that went up_, but quickly decided that it had to be. Not only it was _up_ itself, it was also the higher you could get. What else could it be? True, the red and yellow ones to the right were prettier still – but neither of them was sufficiently _up_.

"Boo botty!"

On tiptoes, he reached out. He stretched his tiny arms above his head. He even attempted to jump – but the button was too high, and he could barely reach the bottom row. The second time he actually fell on his bum.

"Waaah!" he wibbled, rocking himself slightly back and forth.

_Where were the Captain and Cousin Al?_ Up until that moment he had not spared so much as a thought for them, but now he wished that they would turn up already. He would have been happy even to see his mother. If only someone had found him sniffling miserably on the floor and had picked him up, he might have pushed the button, and then all would have been well. But he was alone, unhappy, and in a place where everything was too big or too tall for him. _I can't do it on my own!,_ he thought, and wailed even louder in indignation.

What _could_ he reach on his own? Well, the floor – and, if he stood up and stretched just a little, the handrail. But the floor and the handrail didn't matter. They wouldn't have taken him to the blue robot.

Unless…

For a while, the child was deep in thought. He had stopped wailing, and at length he quit his wibbling noises. He quit sniffling also. If the entire Axiom had shut down around him, chances were that he wouldn't even noticed.

Then he shook himself and looked up at the handrail. It wouldn't be more difficult than climbing a slide from the wrong side. And that, he knew, he could do faster than a good many older kids.

Gingerly, he stood up, reached out for the handrail and pulled first one arm, then one leg over it.

_Report to Axiom superior_, her eyescreen instructed her.

Luckily, now that the lights were on and the holoscreens flashed, the bridge didn't look half as bad as she had feared. Twenty years after her last visit, that part of the ship seemed to have been left mostly untouched by the toll of time. It might have come right out of her last recorded memory file except that it was dustier, that the windows were streaked with rain, and that Auto was…

Suddenly, a lightning bolt crossed the sky, and to its light the Autopilot's optic glowed deep red. It lasted only an instant – but it brought BRIDGET up short.

_Sir?_

She caught herself before the word left her speech synthesizer, though. _Not possible,_ she wanted to say. _It does not compute. How can it be?_ All her sensors told her that Auto was deactivated, that he had stayed that way since the Axiom's landing – since 2805, to be exact. Yet she had to float closerl to make sure that the red glow had been only the product of her overworked circuits, just a trick of the light. For so much of a moment, she had _really_ felt Auto's stern gaze upon herself as she entered the bridge.

She ran her scanner beam over his faceplate twice. When that first examination failed to turn up anything, she split her fingers and hesitantly placed them over the smooth surface. But she couldn't feel any twitch of the processor strips underneath the metal, and certainly no rattle of electricity. His optic was dark and lifeless.

Inactive, undoubtedly. _Why had I even thought otherwise?,_ she sighed.

Perhaps she was beginning to malfunction too. If she was imagining things that weren't really there, then she had been inactive herself for too long. _And whose fault is that?_, echoed her own voice in her thoughts. Angrily, she told herself that _things got scrapped because humans no longer saw them._

_Report to Axiom superior_. Strange, she could have sworn the words flashed in her circuits with more urgency than ever. Thinking of the humans, it seemed, fueled her bitterness- but also kept her steady on course… _Isn't it strange_, she smirked wanly, _that the only reason I'm grateful to the humans is for the resentment they inspire?_

With a slight shake of her head, she fired up her scanner beam again. This time, though, she did not search the steering wheel's faceplate. The cool blue light swept up the length of the pole and over the stand that connected Auto to the ceiling, looking for a hatch of some kind. Then it fell upon a small panel, hanging slightly ajar on its hinges. _Ah, yes, there it goes!_

BRIDGET floated up to it, her eyes wide. Her OCR software confirmed that the switch underneath was set to "_manual_". It would have been so easy to flick it back to "_auto_" now. What she would be to do next, it was only up to Auto to say.

Still for long instants, she did nothing at all.

Her circuits puzzled over that unexplainable inactivity. Once more, the message _report to Axiom_ superior flashed before her eyescreen. _You are almost there,_ said the voice of her thoughts. _Follow your directive._ She knew that the voice was right. Even more, she wanted to heed. It did not compute that she should hesitate, now of all moments. She was only a switch short of fulfilling her directive, and yet…

_Report to Axiom superior._

The thing was that she felt _nothing_ like after a successful reconnaissance. Until that moment she had been driven by purpose, and it hadn't been different from her scouting trips across space. When her scanner had touched upon the control switch, there had been relief. But now she only felt confusion, as if her GPS had broken and she had been patrolling on a wrong course entirely. One where the Axiom couldn't follow.

_Report to Axiom superior, _insisted her directive core. But in order to do that, she would have had to reactivate the Autopilot, and no one had instructed her to do _that_. She was only a reconnaissance unit. She hadn't the right. Activating the Autopilot was a prerogative of the Captain, of a trainee Captain, and of any other commanding officer. But she was neither. GO-4, rest his remains, might have done it, if only—

_GO-4 broke twenty years ago,_ the voice in her head reminded her. _Don't be foolish._

She looked around, at a loss. _Stars, what am I to do? _Her set of directive had always been one and the same. Patrol the Axiom's charted route for obstacles. Report to Axiom superior. If possible - obliterate obstacles. Protect the ship from harm. There had never been anything about reactivating the Autopilot. Or the emergency reactor, as for that. Somehow… it did not feel _right_ to follow a directive that she had set upon herself.

_It has felt right thus far, _argued the voice of her thoughts_. It's _carried_ you thus far. Why your resolution falters now?_

_Because – I don't know. It's different. With the reactor… what other choice did I have?_

_You don't have another choice, now._

_It's different, _she repeated to herself_. It's different. _Reactivating a reactor hadn't felt so much like overstepping her boundaries. But this? _Distressing… unsettling… like shutting off anti-gravs and diving down a steep cleft. A fall through the air. Like – like the Rejects from the Repair Ward, who strayed off the path. I can't._

_There's no one else, _the voice pointed out.

_I can't!, _she wanted to protest._ I can't follow a directive that isn't even my own! I wasn't programmed for this. I'm just a recon-bot! I receive my directive from Axiom superior. I can't just… do something because I decide to._

_But there's no such thing as an Axiom superior anymore, _replied the voice._ 'less you reactivate the Autopilot, no one will tell you what to do._

_No. No. Never._

_Then why not just tell yourself? Why can't you be your own guide – if you're left with no one to follow?_

_No. Straying off the path. I can't just-_

With mild triumph, the voice replied; _If else, who shall?_

BRIDGET's protests were cut off sharply. Even after she had voiced it in her thoughts, the question lingered. _Who shall, indeed?_ After she retraced the steps outside… no one would remain between the Axiom and the humans. Could she watch them dismantle the ship bit by bit, could she watch as they took Auto off the ceiling and had him scrapped while still deactivated, could she resign to see the circuits ripped off the Axiom's computer?

After they were done with the ship, it would be her turn. What use could there be for a ship's reconnaissance unit without the ship? What good was she, away from space?

It wouldn't have been so bad, in itself – the scrapping. Perhaps she had arrived to that cycle of a robot existence when there was simply no other alternative. If it had been just her at stake, it wouldn't have mattered so much.

Then the face of the hateful human woman loomed before her eyes, and for a moment covered even the words _report to Axiom superior._

"_Sometimes I wish… I don't know. I wish that we had dismantled it right after landing. I just can't forget what the ship did to us."_

If the hateful woman had her way, the Axiom would have been at stake. The mere thought was sufficient to set off every red alert warning in her programming.

_It's your directive to protect the ship from harm, isn't it?_ said her voice in her thoughts, barely concealing a smirk.

_Yes… protect from harm. From threats._ And threats, she knew, could come in many shapes. The human woman and her companions were probably not so big scale as an asteroid or a black hole or a dying star. But BRIDGET had no illusions that they might not be just as destructive.

A thunder rolled overheard.

Without hesitation, she split out her fingers and reached for the "Auto"/"Manual" switch.

_*Click.*_


End file.
